Pieces of a puzzle
by Naidoo
Summary: When one of their own goes missing, the team decided to track her down. Quickly they need to realize that they do not know their friend as well as they always thought and that it will take more than the usual to find her and solve the case of her disappearing.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This story has about 26 chapters and I have to admit it is kind of my first try into case-fics - but probably not my last judging by the stories that are all laying around my hard drive. The main POV is from the team, so readers will pretty much know as much as them :) The first chapter is the 'pre-story', like a backflash really. I hope you enjoy...  
_

* * *

_She was in earlier than usual this morning. Nobody probably even noticed. For everyone else it was just another Monday morning. But for Penelope it was not. She had barely slept all night, throwing herself from one side of the bed to the other for several hours until she decided on giving up on all sleep altogether and eventually went to work. She knew it was most likely not the best idea, knew that her mind today would be all over the place except on work, but it gave her an excuse and maybe a needed distraction._

_Entering her office, she got out of her coat and put her handbag and laptop bag on the desk, deciding she needed some coffee. Pouring herself a cup she saw light coming out from David Rossi's office. For a moment she hesitated, arguing with herself whether to go and see him, but in the end she felt that maybe he could somehow give her some advice. He was always open for whatever issues or matters someone had. So slowly she walked up towards his office, knocking softly against his ajar door and then stepped inside. _

"_Sir… I was wondering whether you would have a moment?" she asked cautiously when walking further into David Rossi's office. _

_She saw him huddling over a large stack of paper work, looking none too pleased at the moment. _

"_Is this in regards of a case?" he asked, looking somewhat hopeful at her. _

_And why he should look hopeful when there was more work for him Penelope didn't understand. _

_Warily she shook her head. "No, no sir, it is more a … private matter," she hesitantly answered, nearly a whisper. But Rossi just shook his head, holding up some file, or papers at closer look. _

"_These are the papers to make my fourth divorce final," he informed her and Penelope all of a sudden didn't have such a good feeling about this anymore. Up until now she didn't even know he had married for a fourth time. Now she also understood his look of hope when he had asked about a possible case. _

_"I'm afraid this as much personal stuff as I can handle at the moment," he answered, smiling somewhat apologetic at her. _

_She was certain if she would press the issue he would ask her to sit down and tell him what was on her mind, but figured that he more than enough personal issues at this moment for himself. He didn't need hers as well. Plus there were more members in this team who would probably be able to help her as good as David Rossi could. _

"_I understand, sir," she was quick in replying, slowly starting to walk backwards again and out of his office. But before closing the door behind her she turned around again and mumbled "Sorry about your marriage, Sir" and then she was gone, trying her luck with someone else. _

_Aaron Hotchner's door usually was as open as Rossi's, although that was more in a figurative way since the actual door was always closed. But Penelope knew if she needed someone she could always come to him. _

"_Sir, I was wondering whether you had a moment?" she asked, after entering with a knock. _

_She saw him on the phone, which stopped her in her tracks for a moment until he saw her and waved her further inside his office. _

"_No, I fully understand, ma'am," he spoke into the receiver and Penelope found that he sounded rather serious. More serious then usually – if that even was possible. _

"_Yes, ma'am, I certainly will pick him up right away …" she heard next, when seeing him get up slowly and then he hung up, sighing. _

"_Jack apparently got in a fight at his school. Can this wait, Penelope?" he asked, and was already half out of the door. A rhetorical question then. _

"_Of course, sir," she replied, but was almost certain he didn't hear her anymore. _

_She let out a sigh, before leaving Aaron Hotchner's office as well. So far both options she had hoped for didn't work. She knew Morgan wasn't in yet and Reid was off for visiting his mother. _

_Just when she was about to go to her office, she saw Emily walk through the door of the BAU. _

"_Emily, I was wondering whether I could talk to you about something?" she smiled warily at her friend, who looked anything but happy right now._

"_You know who called me this morning at 7, Penelope?" she asked and saw her friend shaking her head. "My mother. To tell me that she expects me at my cousin Jasmine's weeding next weekend. You know what's worse than meeting my mother?" she kept asking at which Penelope once again shook her head. _

"_Seeing the whole family at a wedding of a family member. God, you know how often I will get to hear sentences like 'And when will you get married, Em?', 'Thinking of settling down, Emily?' or 'What about you? Anyone in your life right now?' They all just wait for me to answer to bombard me with another million questions about my private life," Emily answered cranky and Penelope felt this was not a good moment in approaching her friend with her problems. _

_That only left her for the moment with Derek, who would probably not be in for another hour. So taking her stuff she decided walking towards her office, her head hung low. She would try to get some work done then, before her friend would make it to work. He surely would have a minute to spare to listen to her, wouldn't he?_

_She knew Derek was her last option and she wasn't too keen on that. Over the last few months things between her and Morgan had been … cooling down to say the least. She couldn't really say why, but he had started dating some girl named Tanisha and they spent an awful lot of time together. It wasn't that this itself bothered her, or that she was jealous, but she rarely saw him by now anymore. When they had plans, he usually would end up canceling them last minute. It came to a point when Penelope decided to not even bother with asking anymore. _

_She didn't know what happened between the two of them, they just started drifting apart. They still talked, but it seemed less important stuff, small talk really. _

_And every time she came to his office over the past few weeks to drop by and talk to him it had been a rather strange atmosphere between the two of them. Somehow it felt like they stopped being friends and became colleagues along the way and Penelope hadn't figured out a way yet on how to stop this progress from going any further. Every try was effectively stopped – although rather unconscious she assumed – by him. Or a case came in between and then they postponed, but never managed to re-arrange something. _

_By the end of the day and after realizing that Morgan didn't have the time for her either, she decided that maybe some situations would need to be taken care of by oneself. Taking a long look at the bag which was resting on top of her bed and the airline ticket in her hand she realized that this was _one_ of these situations. Her friends had their own problems to deal with right now, they didn't need Penelope's on top of it. _


	2. the tech that was gone

_A/N: Thank you all so much for last night's reviews. On with chapter 2. This will all be very mysterical for you guys, since as mentioned previously, you will know as much as the team :)_

* * *

It was Hotch who first notice that after the morning a few days ago, when Penelope had stood in his office, wondering whether she could talk to him for a moment, she never came back to him. He assumed that maybe whatever was on her mind was either no longer important or got somehow solved otherwise.

There wasn't any case waiting on them right now, which meant basically only paper work for the team until they would catch a new case that needed their attention and presence. Wrapping up general issues that he was asked to raise with the team, all of his team members were more or less on their way out of the briefing, Hotch addressed his team with one last question.

"Has anyone seen Penelope today?" he asked in the round, curious where their resident tech was.

Everyone shrugged, not really having seen her in a day or two actually. Truth was they all had been so wrapped up with all their own personal little issues that neither of them had paid much attention to what was going on around them. With Rossi finalizing his fourth divorce, Emily fighting with her mother and Hotch having to deal with his pre-pubescent son none of them really were in the right set of mind for noticing much else.

"Maybe she called in sick?" Emily asked, at which Hotch shook his head.

"No, I would have been informed about that," he answered, deciding to go ahead with the plans for the day so far and hoping for the best. She would probably show any moment.

When there was still no sign of her by the time they all came back from lunch and no one had heard anything from her, he started wondering. This really wasn't like her.

Hotch decided to call her cell and home phone, but wasn't successful with either number, just reaching voicemail and answering machine. He left messages on both, asking her to get in touch with anyone of the team as soon as she got the message.

The day went by without any message or reply from their tech savvy blonde. When there was still no sign of their Tech the next day Hotch decided to dig deeper.

"Maybe someone should swing by her place and make sure she is okay?" Emily suggested.

An hour later Hotch and Morgan were on their way to Penelope's place, wanting to make sure their tech was okay.

The door to the main building was open, which left them only with Penelope's front door. They knocked several times loudly, even called her name, but there was no answer. They were about to go again, maybe get someone to open that door for them, just in case, when someone approached them.

"Are you looking for Penelope Garcia from 10D?" an elderly woman asked, at which both men nodded.

"Nice girl, very nice and always so very helpful and happy," she said, looking for a moment as if she reminisced. "For a while I actually thought she might be involved in something illegal, you know, drugs or things like that, since you always saw her smile. But no, she was just happy. Very nice girl," the older woman said.

Both men smiled, knowing what the older woman was talking about. There had hardly ever been a day when Penelope hadn't been smiling.

"Have you seen her lately?" Hotch asked carefully .

"Oh yes, a few days ago. In the morning. When she left for the airport. That morning she was not as happy as usual. But then again she hadn't been for a few days from what I can say. She tried to cover it, but well… we all saw. She seemed very worried, sad even, although that morning a few days ago she was calm… in a somewhat unusual way."

"Do you know where she went, ma'am?" Hotch asked, knowing that their Tech didn't have any vacation coming up.

"She didn't say. She just mentioned something about her brother. But I couldn't say which one. You know, she has four, right?" the older lady asked and Morgan just nodded.

"She said she needed to see him and that was that. I figured maybe it was some sort of family emergency," the old lady informed both men and Morgan wondered whether there was a way to get more information.

"Hotch, maybe Lynch knows something…." Morgan suggested, at which the older lady looked up at him.

"Lynch? Kevin Lynch? I doubt that…" she said, which made both Morgan and Hotch look at her.

"Why's that?" Morgan asked curious.

"They split and he wasn't good for her anyway. The way he was with her… was just not good. A lady is supposed to be courted and wooed," the neighbor explained, making both Hotch and Morgan smile. "And that Kevin character wasn't doing a very good job in that department. My Alvin, let me tell you, he knew how to woo someone…" she went on, and Morgan had a feeling that if he wouldn't stop her, this could take a while. And all of a sudden the old lady's words sunk in. Penelope had split from Lynch?

"When did… did they split?" he asked, seeing the old lady looking up at him in surprise.

"Kevin Lynch and Penelope?" she asked, seeing Morgan nod. "Maybe six months ago. Or four. I couldn't really say. I just know there was some loud shouting one evening and then I never saw him again. No… wait, I saw him once more, when he carried a couple of boxes out of her apartment. But that was it…."

For a moment Morgan felt angry, wondering why Penelope hadn't mentioned anything. She was supposed to be his best friend, and that sort of stuff shouldn't be kept from him. But then he realized that altogether they hadn't been doing much lately. Which was his fault. He didn't even know how often by now he had called her up an hour before something and told her he had to cancel. He didn't mean to, but with his job that took up so much time and his girlfriend more or less demanding the amount of time that was left, he figured Penelope and him could work as well with less time spent together. Or not, as recent events just showed. He had a certain feeling of him and her drifting apart a bit, but as Tanisha already pointed out, they spent way too much time together. Not that he could agree. As a matter fact he always thought his girlfriend was maybe a bit jealous of Penelope and the relationship she had with him, but there was no reason for her. And Morgan had spent quite an amount of time trying to make his girlfriend see that.

Morgan was still in thought about him and Penelope, when Hotch spoke to him.

"I spoke to HR and they told me she had requested a week of personal leave…" Hotch informed his agent.

"Shouldn't these things usually go through you?" Morgan asked, following his supervisor down the stairs.

"Yeah, but they told me that she said she had it cleared with me and I asked her to go through them…"

"That doesn't make any sense…" Morgan commented, seeing Hotch nod agreeing.

"I know it doesn't. But for the time being we just… well, we wait for her to return and I see what was going on with that. If anyone asks I'll just back her up for the moment until we get to the bottom of this."

Morgan admired his boss in a lot of ways. He knew that Hotch's job was anything but easy, he himself had experienced it after all for a short while. And he was damn sure he'd never wanted to do it again. Not when he had to report to Erin Strauss. That woman was like a hawk, seeing and knowing everything. Nothing escaped her and Morgan was certain she was already one way or the other informed about Penelope and that Hotch was asking questions he – as per their tech – should know the answer to himself.

Hotch turned towards the elderly woman again. "Ma'am, when you said you saw her a few days ago, you wouldn't be able to say what day exactly, would you?"

The woman looked worried at the two men for a moment, before answering hesitantly. "It was … Tuesday."

"That's three days already," Hotch realized and Morgan had a really bad feeling about this. But maybe he was just wrong and Penelope really had taken a week of personal leave.

For now all they could do was wait for her to return in a week to find out what was up with this story. And maybe when she returned Morgan should also start working again on his relationship with Penelope. He had let things go way too far for his own liking. She after all was his best friend and he had done little lately to show her that.


	3. untraceable

_A/N: Thank you all very much for the reviews of the last chapter. They mean a lot - every single one of them..._

* * *

One week turned into two, and when Penelope still didn't show after being gone for almost two weeks without any word or notice the team started to get suspicious. They had wondered already quite early in this, but figured if it was some sort of family emergency Penelope would surely have her thoughts scattered all over the place- everywhere but calling back her friends. But when two weeks came around something just didn't feel right.

"Have you heard anything about Penelope?" Emily was the first to ask on Monday, when walking into the briefing room.

Hotch just shook his head. "No, she hasn't contacted anyone. I tried seeing if HR had heard anything without raising too many flags, but it looks like she never called in to extend the week personal leave."

"That just isn't like her," Emily muttered, seeing everyone look at her. "What? You tell me that doesn't seem weird and suspicious to you? She just disappearing without any notice, word, message? Anything? Come on, you must have thought the same…."

"The old lady at her apartment building had mentioned something about Penelope visiting her brother. Maybe we should just check in with him and see what's going on," Morgan suggested, seeing everyone agree with his idea.

"Does anyone know him?" Hotch asked, seeing all his colleagues shake their heads.

"I know she has four. And I know one of them is called Parker. He had been visiting her a few years back. But that's all I know. Surprisingly she actually hadn't said much about either of them, or her family for that matter," Emily said.

"Okay, I'll get a tech on it. They should be able to find them fairly quickly and then we can bring this behind us and get clarification on what's going on," Hotch said, gathering all of his papers and leaving the room.

Two hours later and all of the available techs of the Tech Pool had to admit defeat.

"It is… as … well, it is as if they don't exist," was all Alyson said. "I mean, there is nothing in the system that would tell me who they are. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No credit cards, no credit histories, not even driver licenses. No Utility bills. Just…. Nothing. If I wouldn't know better I'd say someone made them just… 'untraceable'. It actually is an old hacker trick, which requires skills. But if you don't want someone to be found, you can just kinda erase them in certain ways."

"I thought once it is online it can't be deleted. At least that's what Penelope has been saying all these years," Hotch answered slightly irritated. How could it be that none of the twenty techs in that pool could find any sort of information about their tech's brothers or family?

"She isn't completely wrong. But there are certain … um …ways to wipe someone off the net. It requires a bit of work and takes a bit of time, and a lot of skill, plenty of it, but you can do it…"

"So none of you techs can give us anything?" Hotch asked.

"Well… I mean, we can't tell you where her brothers live or what their names are, but one of us was able to trace her in regards of the flight she took when she left a little bit more than two weeks ago," Alyson announced and Hotch felt for the first time some sort of silver lining.

"She flew to Phoenix. We tried to maybe narrow it down, but with almost a million people having the last name Garcia and Arizona being one of the three states with the highest quantity of the last name Garcia it didn't really go far…" Alyson explained, handing him several loose sheets of papers with their results and seeing Aaron Hotchner's expression. She certainly wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now.

Most of the tech's the FBI recruited were IT graduates from university, or people with similar degrees. They all were good, but it was no secret that Penelope had no degree in IT, but was a hacker. They all were good, but Penelope was better. Even today, after almost eight years with the FBI, she could still teach all of them a thing or two. And Alyson was certain that if Penelope didn't want to be found, she couldn't be found. Not through the regular IT ways anyway.

The female tech was about to leave SSA Hotchner's office, when she heard him speaking to her one last time.

"I know this might sound strange, but I would appreciate it if you could keep this all under wraps for a while longer, Alyson? At least until we have some sort of an idea what is going on…" she heard him say, and was surprised for a moment. Technically she was required to report any sort of unusual tracing or follow-up, but then again Penelope was one of their own and she could feel that Aaron Hotchner didn't just ask her to keep quiet about this for the sake of the department, but for the sake of his friend.

"Certainly, sir. I'll inform the other techs as well. It shouldn't be much of a problem," she said, before leaving his office, hoping he would be successful in finding her.


	4. the search starts

_A/N: There are a lot of people who beg and ask and cry that they want updates sooner, but I will still only update once per day - sorry. Also to the nice annonymous reviewer who said 'Ur story is annoying'. 1. How about proper english, so 'Your' instead of 'Ur'. If there is one thing I hate it's text message writting. 2. You review is annoying - so I guess that makes us even. 3. Your review actually amused me, if not to say i had to laugh - although I'm quite certain that was not your intention, but please forgive me if I can only laugh about that and you. _

* * *

Ten minutes after Alyson had left his office Hotch was determined that something was off. Hotch decided this needed more than just a bit of digging and he probably would have quite a lot of questions to answer sooner or later, questions from Strauss at least. He walked towards the conference room, asking the rest of his team to follow him and started a presentation with as little as he had when all of them were seated.

"Since it is pretty slow around here right now and there are no urgent cases that require our immediate attention I decided we try to track down one of our own," he started explaining and a moment later a picture of Penelope was popping up on the screen behind him.

"Did the techs come up with something?" Emily was first to ask. She was the one who had probably left the most voicemails on Penelope's cell phone by now, but couldn't really care if she might be filling up the message space. She had a bad feeling about this and wanted to find her friend as soon as possible.

"No. The only thing they could find was the flight Penelope took Tuesday two weeks ago. They could follow her all the way to Phoenix, Arizona, but they couldn't find anything else. We know according to one of her neighbors that she was on her way to her brother, although we cannot tell which one, since no one seems to be able to find anything on them. As a matter of fact the techs said it seems like someone went the extra mile to make this more or less untraceable," Hotch explained, trying to sound as positive as possible. Although he himself knew they basically had nothing at their hands. Just because they knew she had flown to Phoenix didn't mean anything. She could have taken a bus to Mexico for all he knew.

"Does… anyone remember anything distinguish happing before she vanished? Maybe there was something that led up to her disappearing," Hotch asked in the round and all of them thought for a moment. Neither of them really came up with anything that stood out, so all shook their head after a while.

"Nothing really stands out. Just… the same as always, I guess…" Emily was first to say and there was silence for a moment.

"Wait a minute," Rossi all of a sudden broke the silence and all looked up at him. "That Monday, before she left…. she came to me. It was pretty early actually and I didn't think much about it back then. She wanted to speak to me about something, said it was a personal issue she had. I was in the middle of the paper work of my fourth divorce and that was as much personal issue I could handle that morning…"

Hotch looked at his colleague and friend for a moment. "Right. I remember she came to me as well. I had to leave quite quickly, since Jack had been involved in a fight and told her she should come back later. She never actually came back…."

"I think she came to me as well…" Emily all of a sudden announced. "I wasn't really in a good mood that morning, having had issues with my mother and stuff, so… "

"She came to me as well, but I had my girlfriend on the phone, who went on about one thing or the other. And the moment she had hung up, Strauss was taking over, talking to me about some cases and stuff like that. Plus the paperwork on my desk was not to be ignored either…"

It was then that all of the realized that their tech probably tried to reach out to them, but neither was having the time back then. And now she was gone. Maybe they should have made time. Maybe then she wouldn't have just left from one day to the other.

"So how do we work this best?" Morgan asked, looking as worried as just everyone on the team. None of them cared that this wasn't really their usual case, nor did they have anywhere close to enough information to start anything, but that didn't stop any of them.

"Morgan, you and me start with her apartment. Maybe we can find something there - some notes, diaries, anything that gives us an idea about her brothers, their names, how to contact them or what is going on. I guess we can all agree that this is not like her. Reid, you get down to the airport, see if anyone remembers her and has any information that can help. Emily, you take her office and Dave, you get her car, which is still parked downstairs in the car park. Maybe we can find something somewhere. We will find her," Hotch said to all of them determined. "And if we have to speak to every single person that was on that plane that day to Phoenix. We will find her."

Hotch meant it, he just wasn't sure how long it would take them to find her. Because one thing was for sure, Penelope was the best. They all had seen her in action, they all knew what she was able to do and capable of doing with a computer. And that was the problem…. finding someone who didn't seem like she wanted to be found in the first place.


	5. First steps

_A/N: To my nice anonymous reviewer, whose response to the ANs of the previous chapter was 'I am glad to see you can take critique so well. Lol': __I can take criticism very well, if it's useful and constructive. Your review is neither. But at least it amuses me to no end. Maybe if your career as critique won't work, you should try becoming a comedian. Btw, am heading to Prague for the weekend, so there won't be any updates for a few days. Sorry about that, but that's why I'm posting one now already :)  
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* * *

Hotch had called Penelope's landlord, made sure he was waiting for him and Morgan when they arrived and could let them in.

"When's the last time you saw her?" Morgan asked, feeling stupid instantly. He still couldn't believe that their current case was finding their tech, his best friend. He shouldn't have to search for her, he should simply just know where she is. But then again the last few months had not been very easy on them and Morgan had to admit that they drifted slightly apart. He wasn't even sure when he and Penelope had last talked properly. About what was going on in their lives, what had happened and what was new – something that used to be so normal for them.

When that neighbor of Penelope had mentioned Lynch and Penelope had split Morgan felt for a moment like he had been slapped. He had always thought if the day ever came that she'd wave Lynch goodbye, she would tell him first. Now that it _did_ happen, he had to hear it not from Penelope nor Lynch, not even through someone at work – which would have been bad enough as well – but no, through a neighbor he hadn't even ever met up until that day almost two week ago.

"I never really saw Penelope much to be honest," the elderly guy answered, pushing his glasses up further on his nose. "She was one of the very good tenants, perfect even. No complaint, no issues, nothing. I met her occasionally in the hall when I was around for some of her neighbors or things like that, but other than that we rarely saw each other. I never had reason for coming to her door. She was a perfect tenant. She was a nice and sweet girl, reminds me a bit of my granddaughter. Very bright girl and very friendly, always said hello to everyone and always had a friendly word for everyone. She knew the whole apartment by first and late name. The first day she moved in she went from door to door with cake to say Hi to everyone."

Hotch and Morgan both had to smile about that image. Yes, that somehow sounded like Penelope.

"When she was… shot a few years back everyone was shocked. I mean really … everyone. No one could think of someone who could have a grudge against her. She is such a sweet girl."

"Did you ever meet her brothers?" Morgan asked, at which the landlord shook his head.

"No, I know she has four of them and that her parents died in a car crash when she was 18 or something. But that is all I know. She rarely spoke about her family actually..."

With that he opened the door to Penelope's apartment and Hotch told him that they would take it from here. Morgan was first to step into the apartment. Everything looked just like it had been the last time when he was here – which felt now like an eternity ago. He noticed a thing or two missing, but nothing that would raise concern. It were mainly pictures he remembered her having on display. But other than that nothing was out of order.

Hotch found some mail on her kitchen table and looked through it, noticing nothing unusual either. Mainly bills and some postcards from Florida and Costa Rica from what seemed to be friends. There was no laptop – which both FBI agents had expected – and anything else really didn't give them much to go by.

Morgan found her calendar, which he knew she always had on her, but going through various pages on it he found nothing that stuck out. The address section of her calendar had quite a long list of people, but judging by the numbers and addresses, most of them were in Washington or very close by. No 'Garcia' or 'Parker'. No one as a matter of fact who seemed to live anywhere outside a radius of the next three states.

"Most of her clothes seem to be still here," Hotch commented after he looked through her bedroom. "Which makes me wonder whether she had planned to stay away that long." Stepping back into the living room, Hotch asked "Find anything out here yet?"

"Just a whole bunch of Super8 films about her family, which she sometimes watches and her calendar. Nothing marked for the day of her disappearance though. I'd say we take the films back to the office and see if maybe we can get something from them … I also noticed she took a few photographs. They used to stand here…" Morgan explained, pointing to the sill in front of him. "Two if I'm not mistaken. One with me and her and one with her and the girls. You think she plans on coming back?"

"Not sure, let's hope so. And let's hope the others had more luck in finding something than we did…" Hotch said, walking towards the door of Penelope's door, followed by Morgan who at this stage wished he could share his boss' optimism.


	6. first findings

Rossi had to admit, from all the things he never wanted to ever do, searching for one of their own was pretty much on top of that list. And it didn't help matters to know it was Penelope. He had seen her in action several times, he knew she was smarter than probably most of them – with the exception of Reid of course – and he knew this wouldn't be easy. They all knew she was only with the FBI because she was too good, because in some earlier stage in her life she did something that was supposed to be impossible, or only manageable to be done by very few. That's how her career with the FBI started. David had no doubt that now, after several years with the bureau, she probably loved her job, loved her team and had mostly a good time. He knew she most likely didn't escape or run away - like he had heard earlier when he came down here to the car park.

Penelope was one of them and she surely had some very good motives for doing what she did. Rossi just hoped they would find her time before she'd do anything stupid.

Her car though didn't seem to be the missing piece of the puzzle. All he really could find were dry-cleaning receipts and some receipts from a local grocery shop. There was nothing else in the car. Apart from a few crumbs here and there, her car was more or less squeaky clean. He somehow had hoped to find more, find anything really that might help them with their missing tech and how to track her down.

Her trunk didn't bring many surprises either. There was a pair of high heels stored in it, as well as some bag that contained clothes, some toiletries and things they would need when on the road. It was her go-bag, which all of them were required to have in case they were called out on a case. Going through the bag he didn't find a lot of unusual stuff. Actually he figured it looked like probably most go-bags did. Some clothes, make-up, some other cosmetics, a pair of shoes, underwear, hair stuff, a book….

That made him look surprised. A book certainly was not something you'd expect to find in a go-bag. He figured it could have been left in there from the last time the team had asked her to join them on route, but the fact that everything in this bag was freshly washed and didn't look like worn didn't fit. The whole bag had been exchanged to contain things she would need for the next time the road called, so having a rather old looking book did not fit really in. It could have been her favorite book, but why keep it in your go-bag? He decided on taking the book and some single sheets she had in the back of her truck as well with him and see where it led him.

On the other side of town Reid was not having much more success. The airport personnel remembered Penelope, but they couldn't do much to contribute to finding her. All they could say was that she seemed like a nice girl, who came to check-in at the very last minute and traveled rather lightly.

"There must be thousands of people passing through here every day, how come you remember her?" Reid asked curious, at which the guy at the check-in desk just laughed.

"Maybe, but a cute blonde, working for the FBI? Trust me, you don't have that every day and when you do, it sticks with you."

"How do you know she was FBI?"

"She seemed slightly nervous and dropped her bag a couple of times. During one of these times her credentials fell out. I was asking her jokingly whether she'd carry a gun at which she laughed somewhat nervously…"

"You said, she seemed nervous? How so?" Reid asked, and saw the other guy nodding.

"Well…. she was looking over her shoulder every now and then, seeming as if she was expecting someone. She … seemed like she wanted to get this over with rather quickly. As a matter of fact she didn't seem like she wanted to really be on this flight at all. For a moment I actually got worried, but then remembered she's FBI…"

"Anything else you remember?" Reid asked, wondering why Penelope would need a gun.

"No, that's pretty much all I can recall. She's not…. into some kind of trouble, is she?" the guy asked, at which Reid looked at him for a moment. In the end he decided on not replying to the question, since he wasn't sure what was the best answer to give anyway.

Reid figured it might not make much sense in sticking around much longer. He called Hotch, letting him know he was on his way back and would just stop by Security and see if they maybe still had the tapes from that Tuesday two weeks ago.


	7. more clues

Emily sat in Penelope's office for twenty minutes before she decided that this was useless. No way on earth was she ever going to crack that password to get into her friend's system. So she got herself a bit of help. She knew that tech – Victoria – who was a really sweet girl and had this massive crush on Morgan - which of the female techs didn't? She was a nice girl and she and Emily had talked a couple of times. Emily knew that if she asked Victoria to keep whatever she'd find quiet, the tech would.

It took her five minutes to get into Penelope's system.

"Bring up the last things Penelope looked at, opened, saved…. that kind of stuff," Emily asked and Victoria clicked a few times on several things and Emily saw the screen lighting up with windows and documents. But apparently all of them were work related, cases they had been working on, follow up to some of the cases, her paperwork.

"Anything in her browsing history?" the agent asked and Victoria clicked another few times.

There were some pages that looked like online shopping and that kind of stuff, but nothing that would really help them. Most of the stuff they saw was either case related or some other more or less harmless sites.

"There's a folder under her name…" the tech realized and clicked on it, but got a pop-up which asked for a password. Looking blankly at Emily, she tried a few common ideas, but neither worked.

Emily decided on giving a try as well, typing words she assumed could be Penelope's passwords and after four tries really succeeded in gaining access.

The joy about having been able to gain said access was quickly overshadowed with the realization that it was for nothing. The folder only contained information about some cases that seemed to be rather important as well as the team. She knew her friend had such folder ever since her system had been hacked and a previous agent on this team been shot. Emily knew Penelope had been worried that this could happen again and looked for measurements that would prevent that from happening.

Snooping through her friend's life felt kind of weird, Emily had to admit. Never had she expected she would need to look for clues and ideas about Penelope's whereabouts and issues she might have had in the past. She had always seemed so open about everything, but apparently as Emily was about to find out, some things had only appeared to be good on the surface.

"Found another folder that contains a couple of pictures…" Victoria said, sounding almost triumphantly. And Emily couldn't blame the tech. They had been spending almost two hours on this computer and got nearly nothing. At this stage almost anything seemed like a success.

The tech clicked on the pictures links twice and open popped a picture of a few guys Emily had never seen in her life. They all smiled brightly into the camera and seemed all rather close in age. All four were blonde, seemed tall and rather well-built from what Emily could see. All were tanned and had a certain California-Surfer look going on. There were a few more pictures, some containing all four guys with Penelope, some containing only a few of the group. If these should turn out to be Penelope's brothers, she definitely needed to bug Penelope about the phone numbers. And if they happened to be other guy, she should bug her about the numbers as well.

There also were a handful of pictures that did seem to be a bit older.

"Is that Penelope?" Victoria asked, just when Emily was about to tell her to click on the next picture.

"What? Where?" Emily asked.

"The one on the left. The black hair, black clothes, kinda goth-chick…" Victoria said and Emily saw who she was talking about. And at looking closer she was right. That really was Penelope.

"The only time I believe she went through a goth-phase was back in college, which would probably make that her old hacker-gang I assume," Emily explained before going on. "Do me a favor and run the faces on all these pictures through facial recognition. I have a feeling we might have just found her brothers on the earlier– although the picture itself won't probably help us much without a name and actual addresses and contact details," Emily asked the tech, who was starting the program more or less immediately.

XXXX

The team met in the conference room several hours later, all of them hoping that the others had had more luck with their search, finding anything that would help them. And all had to admit, that if Penelope Garcia didn't want to be found, she wasn't found.

Derek and Hotch were first to give any information they had gathered, which was not much and all they could present were her agenda and some papers Morgan had found laying on a table.

"She took a few photos with her and her laptop. We also found a couple of Super8 films, which might or might not help," he said, sounding almost defeated.

"Well… I found a couple of loose papers in the bag of her car and a book," Rossi shared what he had found, tossing all things towards the middle of the table. "Not sure what's up with the book, it was in her go-bag and the single sheets of paper were in her trunk as well. They seem to look like some sort of meeting-information sheets or something like that – although it doesn't give any name or location of the meeting…"

"The book is her favorite one," Morgan explained after he had picked up the copy. "She has three copies of it, because she likes re-reading it over and over again. She usually keeps one in her go-bag, one in her office and one back at home. And she consults families of murder-victims. I guess that's what the papers are from…"

"You know the group?" Emily asked at which Morgan shook his head.

"No, I just know she is doing this three times a week. I wouldn't even be able to give you a location. I think it is somewhere downtown," Morgan explained, feeling at this very moment as if he wasn't knowing his best friend at all. And it was somehow true, sadly. He could tell them about her favorite movie, her favorite clothing store, or what of the millions of dozens of high heels in her closet was her most favorite pair. But none of these things would get them anywhere closer to finding Penelope. He had always called himself Penelope Garcia's best friend, and with much pride, but right now he wasn't sure whether that privilege should have been his.

"Well, there can't be that many groups of that kind of thing, can there?" Emily asked into the round, trying to sound upbeat. Opening the laptop she had brought from her friend's office, she logged on, signed into the internet and opened a search engine and typed a few words that would be enough to give her hopefully enough results to go from there.

"There seems to be a general index kind of thing for all kind of counseling groups in the D.C, area," she announced a few moments and a few clicks later. "And apparently there are a lot more groups of that kind of nature out there than I would have expected. 216 to be precise," she said a few moments later, sounding not as upbeat anymore as just a moment ago.

"Well, considering that Washington is having one of the highest crime rates in the whole country that is not too surprising," Reid said matter-of-factly, which got him a glare from the brunette.

"I think you can already eliminate a lot by area. She wouldn't have been doing this in the north of the city, neither the furthest east. Not when she is working rather late for us. How many groups are listed in the south and west especially in a radius of five miles from where she lives?" Morgan asked. He knew it was a long-shot. The chances that she would have followed that sort of logic were as high as that she wouldn't. Penelope was the kind of person that would put the need of others above her own. And if that required her to cross the whole city several times per week just to help someone she would do it. Without questions, without arguing. That was the kind of person she was. And right now he just wished he knew where she was and what she was up to. And even more importantly whether she was okay. But in order to be able to answer any of these questions he had to find her first. And that was exactly what he intended to do. And no one would be able to stop him, not even Penelope, trying to cover her tracks herself.


	8. the plot thickens

Looking around, Emily noticed that most of the team seemed like they had lost all hope to ever find Penelope. And who could blame them? So far they hadn't produced any useful clues or ideas that would lead them closer to their vanished tech. That was of course until Victoria's tries with facial recognition gave some very interesting results.

"So… we – that means Victoria mainly – made our way through Penelope's computer. Nothing really interesting there except for a couple of pictures in some subfolders so well hidden you probably would need half a doctor already just to find them," Emily started, tossing printouts of the found pictures on the round table.

"The first few, the ones on top are actually pictures with Penelope and her brothers. I asked Victoria to sent them through facial recognition and maybe we would get a hit and well… we did," she announced, throwing another batch of photos on the table.

"Meet Parker, Palmer, Payton and Pemberley Garcia – Penelope's half brothers," Emily said, almost radiating happiness that finally they were able to get somewhere, although she wasn't sure how far exactly this would get them.

"What do we know about them?" Hotch asked first, taking a bunch of the photos of Penelope's supposedly half-brothers.

"Not too much to be honest," Emily started. "They live mostly on the West Coast with Parker in LA, Palmer in San Francisco and Pemberley in Seattle. Payton lives, according to his driver's license and several utility bills, in Denver, Colorado. Pemberly is in IT, which probably explains Seattle as his location. Palmer is a photographer – from what I can tell more like an Annie Leibovitz, rather than a paparazzi. Payton is an architect and Parker an author, who apparently even has had some books published, rather successful even."

"None of them lives in Phoenix, but then again, Denver and LA are not really that far away," Rossi announced. "And if you go by plane you can make it within maybe two hours from Seattle or San Francisco as well… They could easily have gone there for a weekend, or a vacation. Any indication of that on their credit cards? Or some reservations maybe?"

"Here is the weird thing," Emily started. "There is no data about any credit card activity after four months ago. Either none of them have used their cards – which I find rather unusual – or the data has been…. deleted."

"Penelope really does not want to be found, does she?" Morgan asked, after letting out a deep sigh and looking at his fellow colleagues, it seemed like all off them thought the exact same thing right now.

"Do we have any idea where she could roughly be right now?" Rossi asked, but Emily wasn't able to answer that.

"For all we know she could have flown to Phoenix and hitchhiked into any of the bordering states. Or she could have paid for some connecting flight in cash and it would take forever to go through all the possible flights that left Phoenix that day or several days later."

"Since we have now the names and locations of the brothers, maybe we should check with them first and see if they can tell us what the hell is going on, or some contact number of her where we can reach her," Morgan suggested.

"I already tried all the contact numbers we could find of them, but was only able to leave voice mails at either of them. I told them to get back to me as soon as they got the message, but that could still take a while until any of them gets back to me. If any actually will…"

"So we … wait? Until someone will either calls us, or until we see on the news that the body of a blonde woman was found somewhere?"

"At this point I think it is still too early to jump to that sort of conclusion, Morgan," Hotch was quick in telling his agent. "We do not even know what is going on. For all we know she might just be visiting some family and is having some sort of emergency."

"Hotch she left two weeks ago, without any word to anyone about anything. Don't you find that the slightest bit weird?"

"Yes, I do. But jumping to any sort of conclusions won't help us either. We need to keep a general perspective and shouldn't rush to conclusions or let emotions cloud our judgment in any way. Neither of that will actually help us finding her any sooner."

Morgan had to admit that his boss sounded right. He didn't like it, but he had to agree. Getting ahead of themselves wouldn't help anyone.

"In regards of the second batch of photos, these seem to be old college friends from Penelope. We got hits on almost all of them. All have records. Although they are all rather old and were for nothing too serious, such as environmental protests and such things. Mainly petty crimes and they haven't added anything to these records in years. I guess it was a college thing …" Emily just shrugged.

"I have however contacted most of them, but none of them had really heard anything from Penelope in a while, which according to them was not a very unusual thing."

"So we basically have as much as before," Morgan said, sounding slightly defeated again.

"Well… I wouldn't say that. We now have an idea about her brothers and know some people who are aware we are looking for her. They all promised to call me if they should hear from her…"

That was something, Morgan had to admit, but it still did not get them any closer anytime soon to finding Penelope.


	9. acquaintances

_A/N: Thank you all for the reviews, they mean a lot to me, especially since this is the first time I venture into case-fics. I promise I'll answer the last two chapters as soon as I have a moment... Thanks again,that form of support is much appreciated. _

* * *

It took him and the team a few days until they tracked down someone who actually was able to help them. Derek had to admit he actually never really met any of Penelope's friends, which he found now, in retrospective, rather unusual seeing as she had met most of his. Not that they were dating and this was important. But it showed in situations like the one they found themselves in right now that things would have been a lot quicker if they had known someone from her life outside the BAU.

Joey was a 16-year old kid that Morgan had a few problems picturing in any way with Penelope. When he told them that she was helping him getting over the death of his parents, who apparently were innocent casualties during some gang-rivalry issues, Morgan understood that he was one of the many people Penelope helped to deal with a lose they had endured.

"So who you live with?" Morgan asked.

"No one. I am technically property of the state if you want to call it like that. Orphan really. I just have to wait to be 18 and get on with my life. Miss G was actually the first person I ever met that didn't judge me. Every time people hear my parents were involved in some gang stuff people assume my parents died trying to save me from a gang I was member in. The truth is that they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but hardly no one seems to care about that fact. She was different. She didn't seem to ask any questions at all in the beginning. And she kinda took me under her wing, so to speak. She is probably the closest I have left that could be called family. She is a cool girl, that Miss G."

"How often have you meet Penelope?" Morgan asked, not really able to hide the smile that emerged when the kid had called his Baby Girl _Miss G_.

"Twice a week. Although in the beginning it was more often. When it had just happened, I saw her maybe four, sometimes even five times a week…"

"And when was the last time you saw her?" Hotch asked, how stood next to Morgan and looked as neutral as always, as if she was just another of their suspects and not a colleague and dear friend who was missing right now.

"Two weeks ago."

"Did anything seem weird to you that day about her?" Morgan asked and saw Joey look at him suspiciously for a moment.

"Weird? What do you mean?" he asked, before saying right after "Miss G, isn't in any kind of trouble, is she?"

"No, what makes you think that?" Hotch asked.

"Um… well, you kind of ask all these questions about when I had seen her last and such. I watch TV, you know. Usually these types of questions mean either someone's missing or someone's done something that ain't good."

Morgan looked at him rather surprised, while Hotch remained looking rather neutral.

"So which is it?" Joey asked carefully after neither man had answered or said anything to him.

Morgan looked at Hotch, who just seemed to weigh their best options here, before nodding.

"She is missing. Since about two weeks …" Morgan finally said after a longer pause and Joey looked concerned at them.

"Anything you can tell us about the last time you saw her?"

"I think she might be in trouble…" the kid surprisingly said all of a sudden, making both agents look up.

"Why? What makes you say that?"

Joey looked from Morgan, to Hotch and back to Morgan, seeming like he was weighing his options for a moment.

"A few weeks back there was a guy here, who looked for her. He looked like… some kind of trouble to be honest. You know, the kind of guy parents tell their kids to stay away from. She happened to walk more or less at that moment through the door- otherwise I doubt any of us would have told him anything- and… she looked not too happy to see him. She seemed rather… worried, or even scared. They went outside for a moment, talked a bit and then she came back, not looking as … happy as her usual self. I asked her about it, but she just said it was nothing, just someone she went to college with. I asked whether she was okay and she just said yes. When I asked her if there was anything I can do, she just laughed and said no and that her colleagues at the FBI would be a better fit for that kind of problem…" he explained and a moment later asked "So … did you?"

Morgan looked confused at Hotch, who seemed as much confused.

"Did we what?" he asked.

"Well… did you help her?"

"We are trying to," Morgan said and by now it was more than obvious that when Penelope had come to them she had sought help.

"You remember a name she might have given you for that college friend?" Hotch asked.

"No, she didn't give me a name, but judging by how she said things I guess they weren't either really good friends, or they were, but now aren't anymore."

"You think you could sit with a sketch artist and describe that friend to him?" Morgan asked next, and both agents saw Joey nod slowly.

Hotch gave Joey his card, adding that if he remembered anything else or if he should see the guy again to give him a call.


	10. research into the past

When Hotch and Morgan left Joey and the meeting, Morgan had already called Emily, instructing her on finding people Penelope had gone to college with. He was aware the chances of finding the guy they were looking for were slim, but then again it was a start.

"Start with guys that started at her college the same time. "Maybe we get lucky and get a hit. Otherwise we hope that the description we get will be good enough for a facial recognition program," he said, hoping that he should be right.

Emily got herself armed with Victoria again, to dig deeper into Penelope's college friends, and at first they didn't come up with anything. They even went a few years back and forth, assuming that maybe it wasn't necessarily someone who started at the college the same year she did. It was all in all very time consuming work. Eventually, they marked several people that they what little description they had gotten from Morgan, that would fit. But the few people they marked didn't really strike Emily as dangerous or threatening. All of them seemed to lead a rather quiet life, with a wife and some kids, in several smaller suburbs all over the country.

It was almost time to wrap up and go home, after combing through thousands of pictures, when they after all made some sort of progress.

Victoria had already more or less given up on their little hunt an hour before and by now flicked more or less thoughtlessly through pictures, wondering if they would ever find the guy. The problem wasn't the guy itself. They found plenty of people that matched more or less the description, but digging a little deeper into the guys that looked the part, it became plain obvious that neither of them had any recent trips to D.C. nor any kind of activity on their accounts or credit cards that would put them anywhere close to Washington D.C.

Until she stumbled over him. After she nearly had flicked past him more or less carelessly.

"I think I found something…" she announced slightly excited. She seriously hadn't accepted to find anything anymore.

"Is this one of these we had all afternoon, who look like they might be the guy, but then according to their credit cards were somewhere in Alaska or Europe during the time our witness said he saw someone with Penelope?" Emily asked, keeping the hope more or less at a minimum level.

"No, I have something as in 'his credit card shows a stay at Hilton at DuPont Circle.'" Victoria clicked a few times before continuing. "He seems to frequent Washington from what I can see on his credit card. Usually once a month … There's also something else…" Victoria said careful, not sure how the additional information would affect their case.

"Let me see," Emily said, getting up from her chair and turning Victoria's screen towards her for a better view. The picture pretty much nailed what Morgan had described the guy as – according to their witness anyway – and as if on cue she heard her friend and colleague walking towards them.

"Tell me you got something," Morgan said, his voice almost a plea. Just then he saw the picture on the screen and looked through several papers he was holding, until he found what he was looking for.

Morgan held the freshly faxed drawing from the sketch artist next to the monitor.

"I'd say we got our guy…" he said, some sort of glee in his voice. It was their first real breakthrough after all, from now things hopefully could only get better.

"Um… Morgan…" Emily said rather careful, noticing Morgan's change.

Morgan turned to his friend and co-worker, seeing her rather worried face. "What?" he asked Emily warily.

"That is Victor Lefèvre. He's wanted in several countries all over the world for everything from bank robbery to murder and kidnapping. As wide and colorful as the spectrum of criminal activity is, as bright and colorful is he. If there is any sort of crime he hasn't committed yet it needs to be invented first," Emily said, seeing Morgan's face cloud with worry right away.

At this point both agents wondered what their friend had gotten herself into. And even more importantly, how to get her out of there again.


	11. Victor Lefèvre

_A/N: The heists they are actually talking about in this chapter are real heists, that never have been solved, but they did happened for sure. Also the 2004 crime actually happened 1994, but that wouldn't have worked with my timeline, so I moved it. Power of fanfiction… Thanks for the reviews of the last chapter. They mean tons to me.  
_

* * *

Bad news traveled fast. That had always been the case at the FBI and it certainly wouldn't change with Penelope's case. Just a few moments after their discovery Hotch and Rossi were already on their way back to Joey, with the actual picture of Victor Lefèvre in hand, wanting to make sure that he really was the guy that had been seen with Penelope.

Until they had confirmation or not about him, the rest of the team was trying to gather more information about their prime suspect for now. Something that was at some stages a little too easy compared to how long it took them to find anything in regards of Penelope's disappearance to begin with.

When Hotch and Rossi called in about an hour after they had left the office, letting the team know that indeed it was Victor who seemed to be one of the last people to have seen Penelope alive, Emily and Morgan for once weren't sure whether to be happy about having finally a lead or rather fear for the worst. The information they had managed to dig up by now was plenty and left not much room for a happy ending.

All of them had been working more or less through the night, trying their best to get anything that would help them fill the holes and finally track down Penelope. So when the team met the next morning all of them had plenty to share. But none was able to track her down, or have anything close to an idea of her approximate whereabouts.

"Victor Lefèvre," Emily started, bringing up a recent picture on the large monitor in the conference room. "Son of a French mother and an American father. Dad was pretty high up in the army. That's how he met Victor's mother in France. The parents were rather well off and he was sent to several private schools all over the US and France. From what I could gather he didn't really last very long in any of them, mainly due to his behavior. Somehow however he managed to graduate and started at Caltech a year before Penelope did."

"I spoke to several of Penelope's friends from then," Reid took over from Emily. "They all seem to remember Victor and said he and Penelope had some sort of a relationship, although that was on and off all the time. He was the one who also introduced her to computer code from what they said. There are a few records of his criminal activities from when he was 14, but that were mainly just smaller things, juvenile really. It seems that at the age of 20 he started with the more serious stuff. He was arrested when 20 on suspicion of having raped a woman, which he denied pretty much, but all evidence disappeared, together with the victim."

"Penelope would have been around 19 when that happened. Did she… stay with him?" Morgan asked and he was already having a feeling like he wouldn't like that answer much.

"From what her friends told me, she actually did stand by him. They also said that it was only six months earlier that she had lost her parents and was desperately trying to cling to any kind of family feeling she could get. And I guess Lefèvre was just that for her: family. About a year later Penelope dropped out of college and a lot of her friends from then blame Victor, who they said was in a downward spiral of evil and dragged her with him. He graduated from Caltech and about two months later Penelope dropped out and they both went 'underground'. About 18 months after that Penelope was caught hacking something she wasn't supposed to hack and was placed on the FBI's and CIA's watch list. Two months after that she was recruited by the FBI and spent her first few months with the bureau in California, before being transferred to Quantico…"

After Reid had finished with his information, it was Morgan's turn to fill in the team on Lefèvre himself.

"As mentioned already he had a record already at 14, but that was mainly petty stuff and he started at 20 with the major stuff. At 20 he was arrested and accused of rape, but was said before, both the victim and the evidence disappeared. By the time he was 25 he had added murder, kidnapping, bank robbery and hacking several security systems. Like Penelope he was placed on the FBI's watch list, but I guess his rap sheet put them off of recruiting him. At 26 the FBI issued a warrant for his arrest, but no one ever caught him. He is alleged to have pulled of The Gardner Art Museum Heistin Boston back in 2004 where 13 paintings estimated at about 300 million dollars were stolen. He also is wanted by Interpol for allegedly being involved with the Amsterdam Diamond Heist back in 2005."

"Bank robbery? Kidnapping? Diamond Heists? Murder? This guy is all over the place…" Rossi mentioned. "Is there anything he wouldn't do?"

"I doubt it," Hotch said, and even he was by now concerned. This Lefèvre guy certainly didn't seem like someone who left witnesses. "He might be into no specific crime, but from what I can see all the crimes have in common is that they were executed at an extreme level of discipline. You can't just pull of heists like these without discipline and a plan, as well as patience and a lot of confidence. He is meticulous in the execution of what he is doing, which also shows in the murder cases. The only times where there actually was a case the case was dismissed, because of technicalities or witnesses disappearing. The whole world is looking for him, yet he somehow managed to never been caught or brought to court for anything he is alleged of having done."

"Well… then I say we find him and bring him to justice and get Penelope back," Morgan simply said and he knew this was probably easier said than done. But he be damned if he didn't try at least. And trying he would, and if it meant dying while doing so. But he certainly wouldn't leave his best friend out there wherever she was, abandoning her to her own.


	12. Thinking

_A/N: because a few had been asking - the idea was actually born from a song I was listening to. And there was a line, which said 'When a new moon shines through your window, Or you hear a sad song on the radio. [...] And a memory hits you right out of the blue, that's just me thinking of you." And that basically inspired the whole story. The song by the way, in case anyone is wondering now, is Christian Kane - Thinking about you. _

_Thank you for your continuing interest in this story  
_

* * *

Hotch sent the whole team home for a good night's sleep. He knew all of them would rather prefer to work on this, get their tech home sooner rather than later, but he also knew none of them would be of any use if they didn't get a good night's sleep. After being sent home by their boss, Morgan drove around for about an hour without any actual destination or goal. He just…. felt lost for a moment. He didn't know what his best friend had gotten herself into. Neither did he know where she was right now or what it all had to do with that Lefèvre character, but he knew he needed her back. The sooner the better.

After an hour of aimless driving Morgan stopped, realizing that he ironically seemed to have driven circles around Penelope's apartment without even realizing. He sat in his car for a while, wondering what actually to do now. He knew he was way too worked up to go just home and get a good night's sleep. Instead he got out of his car, searching for the key to first Penelope's apartment complex door and then her front door and let himself into her apartment.

What he should expect Morgan didn't really know. The last time he actually had been here, when it was not in regards to Penelope's disappearance, felt like years ago. They used to be at each other's places all the time, almost every day, with six-packs of beer for him or bottles of wine for her, pizza or Chinese takeout. Sometimes they even used to cook together, had movie nights or something else. But that all sort of stopped. First slowly, when he met Tanisha. He figured if he really wanted to make this relationship work between her and him he needed cut time off somewhere. Unfortunately, as he noticed now, the time he cut out was mainly with Penelope.

It was no secret that trying to make a relationship work with the kind of hours they put in every week, it was a very hard undertaking. Both Hotch's and Rossi's end of their marriages showed just how hard. Reid and Emily didn't really seem to get a headstart in this whole dating either. Every time you thought you finally found someone who might understand your job, your hours, your commitment, it usually only took a few weeks, sometimes months if you were lucky, for it to not work out any longer.

When he was younger Morgan didn't find that too bad or hard. He lived for the day, or the night, and having one-night-stands certainly helped dealing with the everyday job. But now he was pushing 40 and he really couldn't and didn't want to keep woman only for a night- maybe a bit longer, but certainly not anything serious. At some stage in his life he wanted to eventually get for himself what his parents had and somehow he had thought Tanisha would be the way to get that.

Of course sooner or later, in his case it started three weeks ago, she also came to realize his job was way more to handle than she had bargained for. When the first issues arose Morgan tried his best, tried to keep her and mend whatever was broken, but it all was lost. Probably right from the start. At some stage he had come to the realization that people who didn't understand his job, would never be able to understand him really. Penelope was one of the few who actually got him, accepted him with everything she knew about him – which was pretty much everything. She might not have necessarily have agreed with his lifestyle, the ever changing woman and the one-night-stands, but she never judged him either.

There was a time when Morgan actually had thought that they had something, the something they needed to make this last, but it never started to begin with. He never made that step, and neither did she.

Sitting in her living room, with an old photo album that contained mainly pictures of him and her, as well as pictures of the team he had to realize what a big mistake it had been to never made a step towards her. Kevin Lynch was in her life already, but seeing it now, he was just a welcome excuse to not man up and ask her out already. Because Penelope… she might have turned him down. She might have a valid reason for saying no.

There had been a moment during their case in Alaska a few years back when Morgan thought they'd finally been at some stage in their relationship where they couldn't ignore whatever was between them anymore, but the moment they returned home and Penelope was back in Kevin's life the moment passed and never returned.

It was now that Morgan realized what a big mistake he had made. He should have told her about his feelings, should have taken that risk of her not returning them and should have just made sure she was aware about him. Now if everything went bad- he really did not want to think like that- she might never know and he would never know what could have been between him and her. But one thing was for sure, he would do all possible to find her and at least try. And if he did, he certainly would right his wrongs and make sure she knew.

But he had to find her first.


	13. the clues keep coming

It took them two more weeks to get any solid lead that would get them that much closer to their missing colleague and friend. By now the whole FBI more or less was aware of their situation. And how couldn't they be? Hotch was a good Unit Chief, but even he could not explain the disappearance of his Tech for more than four weeks and why he and the rest of the BAU team was frequenting the Tech Pool with all sort of requests.

After an initial issue with Strauss, who seemed to think that Penelope was involved as an accomplice, they got the go-ahead to do everything they could to get to the bottom of this.

"I found them…" one of the tech's one morning more or less happily announced.

"Who did you find?" Rossi asked carefully. Too many times over the past few weeks had they ended up with allegedly some break-through which ended nowhere.

"Lefèvre?" Emily asked, and saw the tech shake her head.

"Penelope?" Morgan asked hopeful, but Victoria shook her head again. Over the past few weeks Morgan had been at Penelope's place almost every night, figuring it was the only place he really wanted to be right now. Not because of the very small and slim chance that she might just one day end up in front of her front door again surprisingly, but because he somehow felt good when he was laying on her couch, and looking at old pictures of them.

When Victoria was shaking her head at Morgan's suggestion the team once again figured this was something that wouldn't get them anywhere again.

"So, what did you find?" Hotch asked, half absent-minded, focused on the files in front of him.

"Payton Garcia," Victoria simply said and saw all of a sudden five heads look up at her in surprise.

"How did you do that?" Emily asked excitedly.

"I'm not sure you really… um… want to know the details of my slightly … um… illegal activities in regards of this…" Victoria started, but was interrupted by Hotch.

"Probably the less we know the better it is." He smiled encouragingly at the tech.

"Long story short, we found old college yearbooks from three of the four Garcia guys and it turns out Payton had a very strange nickname during college. Apparently – and don't ask me why, because I don't know – he was known as Payton 'Lancelot' Garcia. Out on a whim I just wanted to see whether there are any credit cards registered under that name and there is. One to be precise and it was used just a few times, the last just a few days ago," the tech explained and saw the BAU team looking at her with a mixture of expectation and impatience.

"Getting access to the video surveillance – which is stored online – for the day the card was used, I got a positive match to one of the guys in the pictures from Penelope's computer. It definitely is her brother," Victoria announced.

"Where was that?" Rossi asked.

"Small town in Utah, close to the Arizonian border."

The tech put the pictures she got from hacking the surveillance system of the store on the table, together with copies of the pictures they recovered from Penelope's computer. "There is no sign of Penelope though. I checked the footage a few days back and forth, wanting to make sure that she wasn't there as well. No such luck.

Hotch just nodded at the new information.

"Put a trace on the card, so the next time it is in use we get notified right away," he directed at Victoria, before turning towards the team.

"The rest of you get your go-bags. We are heading for Utah. Takeoff is in half an hour," he said into the round, before heading out of the door, hopeful they finally got closer to finding their missing tech.


	14. breadcrumbs

They might have had the lead in regards if one of Penelope's brothers, but neither did they know whether Payton was the one she flew out to see, nor did anyone know whether he was still around the place his credit card had been used. This whole case – and as bad as it sounded, that's what it was it by now – was getting cold quicker than any of them could react.

The whole team worked overtime non-stop and rarely slept, figuring they might find their missing tech that way quicker. But nothing happened. They had been in Arizona now for an entire week, but still were as far as when they came here.

They were in constant contact with the techs back in Quantico, but none of them had anything that could qualify as a lead either. Basically they had nothing, apart from a few pictures and a few names. But both didn't get them anywhere as they soon had to realize.

If they found something or someone that might help them getting further, it soon ended in nowhere, leaving not only Morgan frustrated. He was used to being in control, to cases that one or the other kept moving forward. This constant hoping of coincidentally falling over some clues and the fact that he couldn't do anything, leaving him helpless was more than just frustrating.

Penelope's brother used his card several times since the team had gotten to Utah, but every time they got the call from the techs that it had been used again, they were too late when they got to the location.

"We think we found them," was the news all of them had hoped to hear every day from the moment they had gotten here, and they finally heard them two weeks after getting to Utah.

"Where?" Hotch asked, not wanting to put too much hope in whatever their techs had found. By now they had heard the same sentence twice before and both turned out to be incorrect.

"Arizona, small town, just a few miles behind the border and a few miles away from where you are right now. About 50 miles…."

"A few?" Rossi asked with a smile. "50 miles is 'a few' to you?"

"Well, okay, maybe a bit more than 'a few'. But that is neither here nor there. The only important thing is we found them. Probably. Pretty sure."

"How?" Hotch asked. The last two times he just blindly drove to wherever the techs told them to go. Now he had learned. If they say they found Penelope, he wanted to know how. If he had learned anything over the last few weeks, it was that Penelope is neither careless nor unskilled. She had managed to escape every possible trace and every possible way to locate her. Hotch might not know much about data and computers and tracing or hacking, but seeing the techs back at Quantico running around in circles and looking rather clueless gave him quite a good idea just how good his tech was. He was pretty certain that if she would have to trace herself, they would have found her in just half the time, if even that long.

"Breadcrumbs," Ashley, one of the many techs that seemed to work non-stop on this manhunt, answered.

"Excuse me?" Hotch asked, seeing all of his other team members, who listened in on the conversation through the speakerphone looking as confused at him as he was.

"Penelope is leaving us breadcrumbs. You know… like the fairy tale? Hansel and Gretel? With the evil witch and the kids leaving breadcrumbs to find their way back out of the forest…."

"Ashley, I'm fairly aware of the fairy tale. What does that have to do with Penelope?"

"She purchased a cell phone a few days ago. Nothing big or fancy. One of these throwaway kind of phones. She has made a call or two, or six to be more precise. We can't give you the _exact_ address, but rather an … um… radius."

"A radius? How far are we talking about? And you are certain it is Penelope?"

"It's about a ten mile radius," Ashley answered. "And we are pretty certain that it is Penelope. She used the card of Lancelot Garcia. When… um… accessing the security system it is clearly her on the screen."

"Alright. Send me your info in regards of the area you expect her to be. We'll try to see what to do about it and how to find her," Hotch said and hung up.

"I guess it will be the good old-fashioned way. Knocking on doors, showing her picture as well as Lefèvre' and her brother's pictures around and see if anyone recognizes her or them. Maybe we get lucky," Hotch said and he hoped they found their tech soon. And that this whole mystery would come to an end and they all could go home.

Half an hour later, the two SUV's of the BAU pulled into the small town Alyson had sent them the data about and were starting their footwork, without any results. There were a few people that seemed to recognize one or two people in the photos, but couldn't give any further information or hadn't seen them recently.

That was until Morgan believed to recognize someone. Parker Garcia.


	15. Oh brother

At first he thought he was seeing things, that this was just someone looking maybe slightly like one of the guys in the picture. But when he got closer he became certain that it was Penelope's brother.

"Hey…" he called out and saw the blonde stop. "Could … could I ask you a question?"

Parker nodded.

"Do you know this woman?" Morgan asked, and showed him a picture of Penelope.

The blonde took the picture for a moment and then looked at Morgan. There was a moment when the blonde looked curiously at Morgan, as if weighing his options before answering. _Oh yeah, he definitely knew __**something.**_

"You know her?" Morgan pushed again.

"That's …. my sister," the other man said warily and in a low voice. "But I take it that you knew that already?"

"I assume you are Parker?" Morgan asked and saw the other man nodding.

"And you would be…?"

"Someone who's looking for your sister," Morgan answered, figuring it might be better for the moment to not tell him who he was. Not that he assumed him being involved with whatever was going on, but you could never be too careful.

"Join the line, buddy. We all are looking for Penelope."

"We?" the profiler looked up. _We_? "Who's 'we'?"

"Me, Palmer and Pemberley. We all got strange phone calls from our sister a couple of weeks ago. Really strange and very mysterious. We figured that maybe she just…. drunk-dialed or something like that, not that she is the kind of girl to do that, but … you know?"

Morgan just nodded.

"Anyway, after the first call we all got another call from our third brother, Payton, who sounded just as weird and mysterious. We started wondering whether something was going on, but couldn't reach any of the two. When someone from the FBI was leaving messages on all our phones we knew something was definitely wrong."

So they had gotten the messages, Morgan thought to himself, still having the picture of Emily in his mind when she was more or less so frustrated that no one ever had gotten back to her that she almost threw the phone against the wall.

"How come you never returned any of the calls?" Morgan asked, and knew he more or less had given himself away with the question, but well… he had to ask. Otherwise they would never get to the bottom of this.

Parker looked at the agent for a moment, before letting out a sigh, paired with a smile, "You're with them, ain't you?"

Morgan just nodded.

"So why didn't you call back?"

"No offence, I know my sister works for you guys, but when your sister leaves mysterious messages and then the FBI calls, looking for her… I know what Penelope is capable of doing skill-wise. I mean that's why you guys recruited her to begin with, right? I hate to admit it, but we figured we wanted to have at least some sort of idea what was going on before we gave you any kind of information. I admire her work and what she has been doing for the last few years, and trust me, there is no one out there happier about what our sister is doing now than us. But if she should have … broken some law we certainly wouldn't help getting her arrested again."

"Again?" Morgan asked suspiciously.

"How do you think the FBI caught her the first time? Penelope is everything, but certainly not careless."

"When she called… what did she say? And you said your brother Payton called you, too? What did he say?" Morgan asked, wondering why she had called her brothers instead of the team. Not that he didn't understand family ties, he sure did, but he was also certain that he and the team were way more capable of getting her out of whatever mess she had gotten herself in than her brothers. And they had more… legal ways.

"Well…," Parker started, but then stopped, looking at Morgan for a moment. Just when he wanted to continue they heard voiced behind them, and a moment later Morgan was faced by the rest of the Garcia kids. Well, at least three out of four. He had figured by what little Parker had said that the fourth was in as much trouble as his gorgeous sister.

There was silence for a moment, that Morgan noticed was used by the Garcia boys to look him up and down and trying to figure out who he was.

"Guys, meet Agent Derek Morgan from the FBI," Parker all of a sudden said, making Morgan look at him surprised.

"How the heck….?"

"You think you are the only one who can figure out a thing or two?" Parker asked and Morgan saw Pemberley and Palmer nod, a smug smile plastered over they face. Great, attitude.

"It also helps if your sister is hopelessly in love with you and doesn't stop talking about you. But of course she doesn't know that we know. And if she asks, you didn't get that from us," the one Morgan would assume was Pemberly answered.

"I won't mention it," Morgan answered casually before the words sunk in. _Hopelessly in love?_

So finally we at least meet. Although all of us probably feel as if we have known you half a lifetime already. At least we know as many stories as there are that Penelope was willing to share about her Hero Noir and Chocolate God of something something."

"She tells you that?" Morgan asked surprised.

"Well…" the third one started, smiling in a strange way at Morgan. "Seeing her once a year and meeting her at a bar with a bottle of tequila as companion certainly helps getting _that_ out of her." He smiled at him and Morgan couldn't help but like these guys, although technically he hadn't heard anything about them just until recently.

"So… um… back to the phone call…" Morgan tried stirring the conversation back to Penelope calling them.

"Oh yeah, Penelope calling us, right…" Parker remembered, his smile all of a sudden going as if he just remembered why they met each other. In the middle of nowhere.

"She… said something about him being back and that we shouldn't worry, she had it under control. And that Payton had nothing to worry about. At first we didn't know who 'he' was… I mean… we had an idea or two, but nothing to go on."

"And when Payton called?" Morgan asked.

"It was a really short call, saying he had it under control and that none of us should worry, he'd get Penelope out of this. Of course we still don't know what 'this' is. All I know is that I can neither reach Meagan, nor their kids. We started getting really worried, and of course when your colleague Emily or something called when we got really worried."

"Meagan?" Morgan asked.

"Yeah… um… Payton's wife. But she didn't know anything either. Said she was assuming he was at work. It was quite normal for him to not be home for a couple of weeks when he was in the middle of a project. She said he called her regularly, but nothing out of the ordinary."

"We are not in some sort of trouble for… um… not returning Agent Prentiss' calls, are we?" Pemberly asked carefully, at which Morgan now was the one who needed to smirk.

"Um… I leave that up to Prentiss to decide." He laughed before motioning towards his SUV and signalizing them to get in.

"Hotch, I found something," he spoke towards his headset, while his company a seat on the backseats of the car.

"Yeah? Anything useful?" he heard his boss ask.

"If you call the brothers 'useful' than yes, I found something very useful," Morgan reported and heard a strange sound coming from the other end. A sound he himself couldn't really categorize.

"We'll meet you at the hotel," Morgan was instructed briefly and one look into the rearview mirror he saw Penelope's brother's look slightly worried at him. Oh yeah, Hotch was certainly someone who could easily intimidate people without even being present or saying much. Morgan could have easily said that Hotch was a good guy and great to work with, but he figured the guys could use some payback for not getting in touch with anyone at the FBI. Even if payback only lasted a mere few minutes. It was long enough for Morgan.


	16. interogations

It took them a bit under ten minutes for Morgan to pull up in front of the hotel the team was staying for an uncertain amount of time. The team was already waiting outside, with Hotch looking his usual 'I'm in charge' expression, while Emily looked rather hopeful and Dave just interested. Reid was hard to read, but then again he had his mind probably all over the place with all the information they had gathered so far, trying to piece everything together like a puzzle.

"Guys, meet Parker, Palmer and Pemberley Garcia, who are apparently looking for their sister as well," Morgan said and couldn't help but notice the sideway glances he received from the three blond men when they exited the SUV.

They all shook hands and Hotch looked like he was ready to get down to business. They started telling what they already had told Morgan previously, about the phone calls and why they didn't call the FBI immediately.

"So… how did you figure out where to look for her?" Rossi asked, when they sat down later to have dinner.

"Luck pretty much. Payton is architect and has a project running around here. We figured chances are that he still might be here maybe…. I guess we weren't too far off if you guys are here as well…"

"We got one of our techs to kind of locate her, although we have a bit of trouble finding the exact address to be honest. Where exactly was that project of your brother?"

"Just around the corner. We have been there already, still kind of hoping this all was just some weird case of co-incidence."

"We need to know where exactly the address is," Hotch said seriously, seeing all three guys nod at him and one of them pulling out his smart-phone, clicking a few times on the screen, before reaching for a napkin and writing down something.

"Do… do you know who 'he' is?" Palmer asked carefully and for a moment he looked like he actually preferred rather to not know, as if he knew the less he knew the better it would be for all of them.

"Victor Lefèvre," Emily said, after all five of them looked at each other for a moment, trying to decide and agree how much to tell them.

The looks on all three brother's faces told them more than enough.

"You know him then?" Reid asked and saw all three men nod.

"Not… not personally though. But we heard enough about him. He and Penelope were dating for a while ages ago. Back when she was still in college. In a lot of ways we believe he was actually the reason for Penelope's … um … way she choose to go."

"You never met him personally?" Rossi asked.

"No, I mean, as far as Penelope was concerned she probably would have wanted several times for us to meet him. It was after all rather serious. They were as far as we know even engaged. But then everything changed. When we heard about … um... what he was doing and his influence on our sister we knew we had to do something…"

"You reported her…" Morgan stated, knowing that from the previous conversation he had with Parker before they drove her that he _did_ something.

All three brothers looked at each other, silent for a while before Palmer finally spoke.

"Yes. It was something we never wanted to do, we knew that Penelope isn't the kind of girl that … hurts people or does things willingly that is _bad_. But that Victor guy was a really bad influence. At the end of their relationship – before it ended – she rarely spoke to anyone and no one really knew what was going on with her, them, life in general. We knew something had to happen. We always knew how good she was and that she tended sometimes to … dip into …. um … slightly not as legal things, but it was nothing ever really bad or stuff like that. It took us weeks to really make the decision to do something and report her anonymously. We knew what could happen to her, hoped she wouldn't end in prison for what she was doing, but figured it would be better for her to be there than another minute with that Victor guy… When the FBI recruited her it was a shock, but also a relief. At least we knew she wouldn't indulge in her … usual ways."

"You ever heard again from or about Victor?" Rossi asked, seeing all three shake their heads.

"Not really. I mean, Penelope might have mentioned a thing or two in the beginning, but when it was obvious that Victor had gone after she was arrested – or recruited – no one really ever talked about him again. There wasn't really any reason. And, to be honest, we preferred to leave the past behind us and not bring up any memories in regards of that guy and the time with him."

"So she never mentioned him again?" Reid asked again.

"To be honest, until you mentioned him again we all had figured that after all these years and with the way he was, that he either died or was rotting in some prison… I take it that neither has happened?"

There was another long silence.

"We have… evidence that Lefèvre might have contacted … your sister," Hotch said and Morgan got the feeling as if Hotch was talking about her like another victim. Somehow that certainly did not go down too well with the other agent.

"Is there … any kind of connection between your brother Payton and Victor Lefèvre?" Reid asked, wondering what Penelope's brother could possibly have to do with this.

"As far as I know Payton didn't even know Lefèvre. From the four of us he knew the least about that guy."

"Maybe he was a client?" Rossi pushed.

"Not recently. He had stepped back a bit lately, due to his family and wanting to spent more time with them. And the few clients he took on recently were people he had worked before quite often, or some government projects…."

"Has either of the two contacted any of you again, other than that one phone call from each a few weeks back?" Emily asked and both Pemberly as well as Palmer shock their head. Just Parker looked at all of the people around him warily.

"Well…. she… Penelope called me yesterday…"


	17. she'd rather die

_AN: A few people have been asking how come that JJ has not been in the story. The explanation is quite simple. I wrote the story over a year ago, back when JJ just had left the show and Emily was about to. That's why there is no JJ. Was not meant as a statement or that I don't like her, it just... happened that way. _

* * *

"What?" both Pemberly and Palmer said in union when their brother said that Penelope had contacted him the previous day.

"What did she say?" Hotch asked, a lot calmer than Palmer and Pemberly were. He had suspected as much when their tech told him that the phone Penelope had purchased was used for six calls.

"Um… well…."

"What did she say?" Morgan asked, sounding slightly angry now, but mainly worried.

"She said to contact you guys and tell you she was okay. And for you to neither worry nor get … um… involved," Parker said, looking slightly worried at the FBI agents opposite of him

"She told you to tell us to not get involved?" Rossi asked, looking at Emily.

"Yeah in … less words. She said she had it under control, but to be honest I don't believe it. She just said it to … not have anyone worrying about her."

"What makes you say that?" Emily asked.

"You do work with Penelope, right? Have you ever seen her asking for help? She always thinks she can do it herself, and usually she can. But sometimes she doesn't realize that certain things are just above and beyond her. She thinks she had to protect everyone around her from her own trouble. She'd rather die than ask someone for help and bother them unnecessarily with her own issues. I guess that's why she didn't tell anyone what is going on. And I honestly have no idea what my brother did to get front row seats to whatever is going on."

"Maybe he's involved. Maybe he is the actual reason for all this…."

"Maybe, but I don't see how he could be. He is an architect. He has a family and leads a fairly normal – if not even boring – life. Just like so many others. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't gamble. He has no money issues, his business is going fairly well and I just don't see any reason he is involved with this."

"Any recent issues? Maybe some strange people he mentioned? Anything out of the ordinary he might have mentioned once, but then never again? Anything that might not make much sense when it happened, but might make sense now?" Rossi asked, but came up blank with the brothers.

"No, as Parker already said, our brother was fairly … boring if you'd like. To be honest none of us had much experience with the law in any way except for Penelope. But that she got plenty," he laughed and the other two laughed with him.

"And Penelope didn't mention anything in regards of where she might be? Didn't make any strange comments or you didn't hear anything in the background when she called that might help us narrow down where the two - well… rather three – of them might be?" Hotch asked, and for a moment there was silence.

"To be honest neither of us probably paid much attention to it, being more focused on the stuff Penelope said…" Pemberly answered and saw slight disappointment flashing in all the agent's eyes.

"But…." Palmer interrupted, "we have the messages probably still saved in our mailbox. We all got the same message, probably some sort of conference call, where she ended up leaving the same voice mail on all our mailboxes…"

Palmer fished for his phone in his jeans pocket and handed a silver headset over to Hotch, who looked at it for a moment, before dialing Palmer's mailbox and putting the headset on loudspeaker.

What they heard was a slightly distraught sounding Penelope.

"_You have one saved voicemail. Voicemail one, from Thursday, 24__th__ June 2011, recorded at 11:01am:_

"Hey guys, it's me… I know, long time no hear… I … um… just meant to call and say to not worry. I got myself in a bit of a mess, or well… Pemberly did, but I'll help him get out of it He's back, but… no worries, we'll get through it and I'll … um… I'll call you when I can…" _If you want to listen to your message again, press…._

"We'll send the message to our technical Analysts in Quantico, and maybe they can figure something out something from the background," Hotch announced.

"Technical Analysts? Isn't that the same position Penelope is holding?"

"Yes, but let me guarantee you that Penelope is irreplaceable…"

With that conversation was over and Hotch sent the audio-files to Quantico and made sure he had numbers for all three brothers, just in case he needed to get in touch with them again.


	18. the closer they get

Morgan had to admit he certainly liked Penelope's brothers. They were a lot of fun and cared a great deal for their sister. He could see they were as worried about her as he was, although maybe for other reasons. The more time he spent with them the clearer it became to him just how much Penelope talked about him. It seemed like there wasn't really any story these guys didn't know about him. A fact that maybe should have worried him but, for whatever reason, he found it rather calming - as if they knew already who he was so he didn't need to prove anything. Although why he thought for a moment he needed to prove anything was a bit of a mystery.

"How often do you usually speak to your sister?"

"Depending on how you ask," Parker asked, smiling at the FBI agent. "She calls me and Pemberly the most, about every second or third day. Payton and Palmer she usually calls once a week. I guess, she loves me and Pemberly just more."

"And how often do you usually see her?" Morgan asked and got a few curious looks from Penelope's brothers.

"Are you trying to interrogate us, or something like that?" Palmer asked, still smiling at him.

"Penelope never spoke about any of you in all the years I've known her. And I know her pretty much since the time she was recruited by the FBI and assigned to the BAU. And I've known her pretty well, as you might know … We talked about everything, apart from her family really."

"Does that bother you?" Palmer asked.

"Not because she didn't talk about you. I get that there are things she might want to keep for herself, but I feel like… not knowing about that is what is keeping me from getting her out of whatever mess she had gotten herself in."

"If it is any help, I don't think knowing more about the relationship between us would help you guys getting anywhere nearer to where she is right now," Pemberly said, and it somehow made Morgan not feel any better. Over the last few weeks, months even, they had hardly talked to each other, and sure, even if they had talked, he was quite certain that she still wouldn't have mentioned her brothers any more often. Or the mess she was in. But maybe he would have noticed something at least.

"But to answer your question…" Parker started. "We take turns in visiting. Obviously we -, " he said, motioning for the other two guys, "- we see each other more often, because we live closer to each other. Penelope always must go cross-country to see us. Or vice versa. But usually once a year we make it happen."

"Who's the last one she visited?" Morgan wanted to know.

"Palmer," all three said in union.

"When?"

"About half a year ago."

Morgan knew that chances that this meeting was in any connection to whatever she was in now were pretty slim, if not even non-existing.

The team had checked out the site where Palmer supposedly was working right now. Or where he was supposed to have worked. There was, as expected, no trace of him or Penelope or Lefèvre. They asked a couple of people around, seeing whether anyone had noticed anything, seen any of the three, but came up empty handed. At that speed they would never find her. And Morgan hated that thought.

It took them another two weeks for another break-through and by now this case felt like their longest one yet. Somehow not having Penelope available on speed-dial made days seem twice as long and never-ending. Every now and then he called Penelope's number in Quantico, just too listen to the message on her answering machine, telling him in her usual upbeat and quirky voice that she wasn't at her desk right now and the call would be forwarded to the general Tech Pool in a few seconds. That was how much he missed her. It had come down to that. To him calling her number and listening to her automated message over and over again. He really wanted her back. The sooner the better. But then again he had been saying the same thing over and over again for the past few weeks. And slowly he started to believe he would never see her again. And he would never have a chance telling her how much he missed her, how much she meant to him and how sorry he was for being a fool for so long. But maybe it wouldn't need to come to that. Maybe the team would find her and it all would work out in the end.

_Maybe. _


	19. reunion

_AN: We are slowly moving towards the end of this. There are still seven chapters left..._

* * *

Two weeks that almost felt like an eternity. Two weeks until they got another breakthrough. Fourteen more days. Three hundred and thirty six hours that seemed like a thousand more. At some stage Morgan really almost had given up, like almost everyone else on the team. And for a moment he really hated himself for that. That he didn't have any hope they could find her. But two weeks without any clue and break-through could do that to you. At this stage a month and a few weeks had passed and they all had seen cases with a lot less time and the worst of possibilities for an outcome.

But then the almost impossible happened. They found Payton Garcia. Or rather he found them. At first it was a mystery how it was possible. The next question on everyone's mind of course was where Penelope was. Morgan wasn't sure whether he was ready for the news of her maybe not having made it. But then again when are you ready for news like this?

To his – and probably everyone else's – relief Payton explained that she was still very much alive and doing okay. And that his job – or his presence – was no longer required.

"What does that mean?" Morgan asked irritated.

"The job is done. I was … the instrument of pressure he needed to get from Penelope what he needed," Payton explained and Morgan wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know what exactly Lefèvre needed from Penelope.

"He threatened you in order to keep her in control?" Rossi asked.

"He threatened to kill me and my family, and would probably have moved on to you," Payton went on, and looked at his three brothers.

"What … what did he want from Penelope?" Emily asked.

"Something… I … honestly I don't know. It has something to do with some illegal hacking and… some security issues that aren't easy to bypass. Well, unless you are of course our sister. It took her a couple of days to get done what he wanted her to do, but I think she did it. Well… he … he at least let me go."

"That doesn't make any sense.," Hotch all of a sudden said, seeing Payton and the rest of the Garciaa boys look at him.

"Why?"

"He is a criminal. You are technically a witness. With letting you go he risks that someone out there is able to testify what he did…"

"But I don't know what he did. I have no clue. Most of the time they were talking a whole different language. IP-addresses and Proxy-servers. Re-routing and firewalls, bouncing of signals and backtracking something. It was like they spoke their own language. I didn't see anything. Any secret or stuff like that. My eyes were blindfolded the entire time. I could just hear things, but that certainly is not even close to enough to hold up in court…."

"He probably knew that. That's why he took you. If he had taken Pemberly, who is in IT as well, he had risked that he had understood what was going on…" Rossi mussed. "How did you get out?"

"He just said that my job was done and he would have what he needed in a few hours, then he instructed someone to get me back here and … well, that was it."

"Let me get this straight," Morgan started and everyone around him could sense this would not end very well.

"You are held hostage by a psychopath and leave your sister all on her own, with a guy who is wanted in several countries for heists, murder, supposedly rape and worse?" Morgan asked, sounding angry but having it more or less under control.

"Even if I would have wanted to stay there, it wouldn't have been possible. He had said it and not a minute later I felt being pulled up and guided towards the car as it turned out. I didn't even have a chance making sure Penelope was really okay. I mean she sounded okay, but … well… you know what I mean. I swear, if something – anything really – happens to her, I'll never forgive myself…"

"Has she said anything to you? Anything that might help finding her? Or do you remember anything specific about where you were?" Hotch asked.

"I couldn't see a thing and we drove quite a bit, but then again I was blindfolded. So it could only feel like forever."

"Maybe there was some background noise at the place they kept you? Maybe you remember something about the ride back from the place? Did you take a lot of turns? Was there maybe something like railroad tracks you drove over? Anything really to help us narrow down the area…"

"I… to be honest I don't remember a lot. There was something like birds in the background, probably outside, but I guess that isn't very helpful…"Payton mussed and stared at several blank faces. Yup, not helpful at all.

"I'm sorry…." he finally said, feeling like he let everyone down one way or the other. "I think I need a drink after these last few days," he said, getting up, out of his jacked and towards the bar, that was behind them, ordering the barkeeper to get him a scotch.

"What's that?" Emily asked, as she bent down and picked up a piece of paper that seemed to have fallen out of one of Payton's pockets – probably the jacket when he shrugged it off.

"I…. don't know," Payton answered, taking his glass from the barkeeper and returning back to the table. "I don't remember anything in my pockets when I was getting here on my job. I got the jacket right from the dry cleaners, maybe it is something they,…. left in there or stuff like that…"

"It's numbers. Would be quite something strange to be left in your pockets by the dry cleaner…"

Emily turned the piece of paper around, stopping all of a sudden. "I don't think this was left by your dry cleaner…" she said and saw all of the guys looking at her for a moment.

"What makes you say that?" Rossi asked, and Emily turned the piece of paper towards them, so they could read the what was written on the back.

It was definitely Penelope's handwriting.

_Make sure they get this!_


	20. more breadcrumbs

"It's an IP-address," one of the tech's explained over the phone. "And before you ask, no… I checked it and I can't pin down it's exact location. And even if I could've, it might have given you a radius of several miles for the IP-address," the tech went on explaining.

"What can you do then?" Hotch asked, almost impatient, something none of the other team members had ever really seen on him.

"Well… it can also be like an internet-address. Like google or amazon. But usually not as … um… public. If you have an IP-address it usually is only supposed to be seen by a few …. selected people."

"Is it a website?" Emily asked.

"I actually haven't gotten that far yet. But just give me a second and I'll tell you," the tech answered and for the next few moments all of them could hear typing and clattering of keyboard keys.

All of them waited hopeful for some good news, although none of them really understood at this point why Penelope should have given them an internet address – if it should turn out to be one that is.

"Yup, it looks like an internet-address. Although I am not entirely sure what I am looking at…." they heard the tech through the speaker.

"What do you mean, you are not sure what you are looking at?" Morgan almost snapped. Jesus, Penelope's life might depend on them figuring out what this was and right now he felt like their tech was playing with her life. Although not literally of course.

"Um…. well…. it is a bit like random numbers that appear on the screen. I might need a moment or two before I can tell you what this is…" he said.

"Call us back when you know what it is and please try to get this processed quickly," Hotch instructed the tech and hung up a moment later.

"She must know that somehow we can crack whatever this is she sent us. Otherwise she wouldn't have gone through the trouble of getting this to us," Emily remarked.

"That, or she just got desperate and sent a message that might make sense to her, but not to any of us," Rossi said and saw Morgan look at him angry.

"Let's just assume for the moment that this message was for someone. Without too much thinking and figuring out. Something she assumed would make sense to someone right away, or more or less right away…"Morgan said, still looking angrily at Rossi. They all acted already as if she had lost her mind. He might have doubted before whether or not Penelope was still alive, but he knew if she could sent a message, it wouldn't be just some nonsense. She was trying to tell them something. Something they needed to figure out. Fast.

"Okay, I take wild guess this wasn't meant for any of us," Reid all of a sudden said, seeing all of his team mates looking at him. "She can't be sure that we are actually involved. Hoping? Probably. But knowing? No. And she can't base her one chance of getting a message out on some slim chance that she has no control over and no knowledge whether we are here. So this message was definitely not for one of us…" Reid concluded and saw his colleagues still looked at him warily.

"Well… Payton clearly doesn't seem to have any idea about this message either…"

"Parker maybe?" Emily suggested, before Rossi said "Pemberly," and saw four heads turn his way.

"Our tech said it's an IP address. IT stuff basically. Pemberly is living in Seattle, working for an IT company. It must have been for him. She knew pretty much that her brothers would be looking for her, knew it because she left them messages _alerting _them that something was wrong. What did our tech say a couple of weeks ago? Breadcrumbs. She laid a careful trail, knowing that when it all fell right into place, she would have a way of getting something out. We need to get Pemeberly and a computer in here," Rossi said, and all of his colleagues had to admit it sounded quite logical.

About ten minutes later all four Garcia brothers were back with the BAU team, with Pemberly sitting between Hotch and Rossi, with Morgan and Emily behind him, all around a laptop, typing in the combination of numbers and dots as it was written down on the piece of paper Penelope had managed to send out with her brother.

Six pairs of eyes looked at the laptop screen impatiently, hoping that whatever would happen next would get them finally to their tech and out of this goddamn nightmare this whole case had become.


	21. heart to heart

"What is it?" Emily was first to ask, when the page built up and they saw nothing but numbers.

"It's code…" Pemberly said, after only a few moments.

"For what?" Rossi asked, confused.

"No, not … code as in code language. Code as in … computer language. Whenever you do something online, or even when you work on a program, every key you hit generates code, which you can't see. Which you are not supposed to see anyway, since it wouldn't make much sense unless you are in IT. Than this makes somehow sense and you are able to tell what the person did – well, one way or the other."

"And what does this tell you?" Hotch asked, pointing at the page on the screen.

"I'm … not sure," Pemberly answered warily.

"The message Penelope sent out with Payton is for you. You are the only one she knows is more or less guaranteed out there to find her and understands all this IT stuff. It _has_ to mean something. Think!" Morgan more or less shouted. He couldn't help it. He didn't mean to, but standing there, looking at something that made no sense at all to him and knowing Penelope meant to tell them something – and the only person able to understand not really trying – frustrated him.

"Morgan," he heard Hotch's voice almost a second later. "A word?" his boss asked, although the agent knew this was not a request, but more a command. He saw his supervisor nod for the door and motioned for him to follow.

"Listen Hotch, I'm sorry –" Morgan started, but was interrupted by Hotch.

"We are all concerned about Penelope. We all want her back, unharmed and safe, but yelling at each other and especially at the people who might be able to help us get her back will not get us anywhere closer to her faster."

"I didn't mean to-" Morgan tried again, but was once more interrupted by his boss.

"I understand your concerns, Morgan. But you also need to understand that this is a lot of pressure all of us are under right now. I have to explain to Chief Strauss every day why exactly we're still not back yet in Quantico. According to her this all is rather black and white and Penelope decided to change allegiances."

"That's completely ridiculous," Morgan exclaimed, barely able to restrain his temper once more.

"I know this will sound bad now, but you need to distance yourself from this case. You need to see this all just like another case and Penelope like another victim…"

"She is my best friend. And the amount of work she has done for this team, the times she has saved all our asses and you tell me to look at her just like another victim?"

"Getting emotionally involved and upset will not help anyone, least of all her. It makes you irrational and unobjective. We need to keep a clear head and an open mind in order to find her. Don't make me send you back to Quantico…." Hotch warned him and Morgan was about to protest. But he knew his boss was right.

He took a few steps forward, away from the building they just exited and let out a deep sigh.

"I just…. She is my best friend, Hotch," he all of a sudden said. "And I feel…. I feel like I let her down. She came to me…" he went on.

"She came to all of us, Derek. And none of us took the time. We all had our own little issues to deal with on that day. It is just another case of 'wrong time, wrong place'," Hotch interrupted, but saw it did do little to help his colleague.

"I'm her best friend, Hotch. At least I thought I am. Look how lousy I turned out to be. She came to me and I just… didn't even pay attention. If she can't come to me, to who is she supposed to go to?" he asked and sat down some wall that was marking the end of the parking lot. "I swear…. if anything happens to Penelope, anything that could have been prevented, I will never forgive myself for that…"

For a moment there was silence and neither man spoke.

"Are you sure this is just about you not listening to Penelope when she probably would have needed it the most?" Hotch asked and Morgan looked at him for a moment.

"What else would this be about?" he finally asked and could have sworn, for a moment, he saw Hotch roll his eyes.

"Morgan, we all know that you and Penelope have a rather special relationship which each other. One that is probably quite hard to define, since it seems to cross the limit of friendship every so often. But yet, you are also not dating. Maybe she not coming to you, or you not listening to her, is not your only worry. Maybe there's something else you mean to …. to tell her?" Aaron Hotchner asked and saw his agent look at him surprised for a moment.

When there was no reaction or answer, Hotch went on. "It doesn't take a profiler, or even to be your friend, to see there is more to the two of you than just that close bond of friendship…"

"Something that would cross the rules of fraternization," Morgan argued. He knew that was technically not really a concern for him right now, but no need to let his boss known about that – yet.

"Fraternization rules haven't stopped you before," Hotch noted and saw Morgan look at him again. "Because ….if I am not entirely mistaken you slept with probably half the interns the FBI recruited the past ten years. And don't even argue that."

There was a long silence before Morgan spoke again, surprising Hotch with what he said.

"Would it be an issue if we went there? Given we at some point manage to get her out there?"

Hotch certainly hadn't expected his agent to crack down that easily. He had expected to pussyfoot around the subject for another while, days, if not even weeks until Morgan would admit he wanted to go there.

"Personally I don't see a reason why it should be a problem. You are a supervisory agent, she is a Technical Analyst. So it isn't as if there are any work related conflicts. Only one of you is a field agent, so that is not going to be a problem either. Of course, seeing you both work for the same department might raise a question or two, but honestly, for the moment I would say, take that mountain when it comes your way. Until then, just do what everyone has been betting on happening since the beginning of you and Penelope…"

And with that their conversation was over. Hotch went inside, seeing whether they had any success in finding something useful, while Morgan stayed outside a while longer, trying to clear his head.


	22. communication

_AN: I am terribly sorry for the two day delay in posting the next chapter of this, but I had quite a bit of a busy time and löast night my internet gave up on me. But I appreciate you all still reading this. There aren't a lot more chapters left,..._

* * *

Morgan didn't know how long he sat outside, in that parking lot, thinking. But when he came back inside something had changed. They all were busy with something. Emily was on the phone, and so was Rossi, Reid was standing with Hotch next to Pemberly and the rest of Penelope's brothers seemed busy with god knows what. Something certainly had changed.

"What… what happened?" he asked, walking towards Emily, who just gotten off the phone.

"We found her. Well… he did," Emily started explaining, pointing at Pemberly , who was still busy with the laptop. "Turns out Penelope is talking to us, in one way or the other…."

"What?" Morgan asked, confused.

"She is not really _talking_," Pemberly turned around and looked at Morgan. "She has a personal…. well, I guess you can describe it as some sort of blog. It's not really a blog, but … it's hard to explain what it actually is. To the untrained eye it looks just like a whole lot of nothing, a page just like you'd expect to see when you create homepages. And I mean creating homepages as in writing them, not clicking on a few drop down menus and such stuff. It also is used to … um … gain access…"

"Gain access?" Morgan asked.

"Hack," Reid explained without even looking up.

One look at the laptop screen and Morgan wasn't any wiser.

"This basically is live. I guess Victor doesn't even notice she is doing it."

"What does it tell you?" he aske,d feeling his hope coming up again.

"Not much…"

"Then why are we looking at it?" Morgan snapped, but a moment later saw Hotch glare at him and he felt bad about it instantly anyway. "I'm sorry… this all is just…"

"No worries," Pemberly said. "This is more than any of us wants to be at the moment anyway. I understand…."

"So … what can we do with this?" Morgan asked.

"To be honest… not sure. She wrote a program to gain access to something a few days ago. When Payton was still with them, so I'm not sure why she would write the address of this page on a piece of paper…"

"How are we supposed to stop whatever she is doing if it all is already done?" Emily wondered.

"Maybe we aren't…" Rossi all of a sudden said and was meet with half a dozen pair of eyes. "Maybe we aren't supposed to stop whatever she has been working on, but rather record it…"

"What do you mean?" Hotch asked.

"Think about it, Penelope had no way of knowing when the piece of paper was found. And if the program was written before Payton was set free there wouldn't be many ways of stopping it anyway. You can assume, since she knows what she was doing, that Lefèvre will probably be not as … gracious with her as he had been with setting her brother free. She probably is aware of that and with her gone, there wouldn't be any witness left. Payton cannot say what they were working on since he has no idea, so how can he come forward as a witness to a crime he himself doesn't know has gone down? He doesn't even really know what Lefèvre wants. She is aware that with her the only witness that could collaborate any information is gone. But if whatever she had been doing is saved somewhere and handed over to people who know what to look for… they have a case…"

Well, maybe we should save her first instead of trying to make safety copies because the only witness will not make it…." Morgan declared. "You said she is communicating through this. Can you send her a message or something? Get information on her whereabouts?"

"No, it would technically be possible, but I would have to hack it and knowing my own sister, this will be way beyond my skills. Also, it might alert Victor…"

"Do we have any idea where she is?" Morgan asked, feeling his hope sink again. God damn it, he hated that. They got a breakthough and within the same moment they could cheer, they also found out that they still didn't get any closer to her. By now they probably had more or less untangled the whole web of mysteries in regards of what was going on, but they still didn't know where Penelope was.

"Quantico is trying to trace the IP-address, but… well, it seems to get bounced through almost every country. They're working on it…." Hotch explained and somehow Morgan felt helpless again.

A moment later he heard Hotch's phone ring. It was a rather short conversation, with Hotch saying only a few words and making more agreeing sounds than anything. A few moments later the phone was shut and Aaron Hotchner looked at Morgan.

"We got her location…."


	23. Saved

The techs back in Quantico had sent the address they had obtained to Hotch and the team was on their way to it. The approximately 20 minutes it took to drive to what seemed to be an industrial estate felt like eternities for Morgan. Despite everyone telling them all the time that every sign pointed towards Penelope still being alive, Morgan would only believe it when he saw her, had her in his arms and told her he'd never let her out of his sight again. Ever. He didn't care how alpha-male or possessive that might seem. The last few weeks had probably taken several years off him and he didn't even want to think about what this all had done to his Baby Girl.

Someone who Morgan was not concerned about however was Lefèvre who, if he should have hurt Penelope, would need to worry about Morgan hunting him until the end of this world - if necessary. But Morgan hoped it wouldn't come down to that. He didn't want to see Penelope hurt, in any way, but there was little hope. If not physical, Morgan was pretty certain she would be emotionally hurt. You couldn't just do what she was forced to do – whatever that was – and just be _fine_.

They had called for backup as well as SWAT, just to make sure they were the first to arrive at the location. It was looking like a normal warehouse, no vehicles around, not one person, nothing at all. If he wouldn't know better Morgan would have guessed they were out of business and no one was here.

They waited for their backup to arrive, having them instructed to not draw any attention to them and approach silently, without any sirens or stuff like that. About five minutes after they had arrived the backup and SWAT arrived as well and a plan was formed.

They had an approximate idea from Payton what to expect in regards of manpower. Hotch and his team knew that at least five guys were inside, excluding Lefèvre and Penelope. Payton wasn't able to give any information however about any guys outside and whether there were any that patrolled the premises.

It was agreed that SWAT would go in first, making sure everyone would be safe and the target would be brought down. The premises were to be secured and for the moment everyone who was not Penelope Garcia was to be brought down, with as little violence as possible.

For Morgan the whole thing went down as in slow motion. He couldn't get Penelope in his arms soon enough but he also knew he had to let the guys do their job without interference. When he finally saw one of them bringing her out safely he wasn't sure whether he was more relieved to see her unharmed or whether because this whole nightmare was finally over and they had her back.

When she saw him, Penelope started to cry. She couldn't help it. She hadn't really expected to see her best friend again. And when he wrapped her in his arms, she took a deep breath and inhaled. It had been way too long since she last had done that, longer than this whole 'situation' had lasted.

"I missed you so much," Penelope mumbled against Morgan's chest, who surely could feel the tears that started to wet the front of his shirt. But he couldn't care less. As long as he had her in his arms, safe and unharmed nothing else seemed important.

"I missed you, too. And I swear to God, I'll never let you out of my sight again. Ever. Just that we are clear on this," he promised and kissed the top of her head, just like he used to do before she disappeared and they 'fell apart'.

Morgan – who already had her tightly wrapped in his arms – could feel Penelope move and felt a moment later how she wrapped herself tighter against him again, making it a bit harder to breath for him but once again he didn't care.

Penelope could see movement out of the corner of her eye and noticed the rest of the team walking towards them. For a moment she felt sadness and wanted to tell them to go away and let them be like this for another few moments, but she knew that would have been selfish and stupid. They seemed concerned as well, and for a moment she wondered whether she would be in trouble again.

First up was Emily. Who apparently didn't even seem to care that Penelope was currently in a tight embrace from Morgan, since she just pulled her out of it and hugged her almost too tight.

Next up was Reid, who was just like Emily hugging her tight. It almost seemed that both trusted Morgan to have spoken on their behalves already and remained more or less quiet.

Rossi was the first of all of the three to actually say something along with the embrace. Although his embrace was not as tight as either Reid's or Emily's. And he seemed a lot less shaken up – but than again he was Rossi. He probably was managing to keep his emotions rather well in control.

"I guess it goes without saying that our cases usually go a lot faster when we have you on our side, instead of being the one we need to chase," he joked and Penelope had to laugh for the first time in days – weeks even.

"Don't ever work for other side again, Penelope. It makes our jobs unnecessarily more difficult," Hotch joked, before even he gave her a light embrace that lasted only a few seconds, but said everything Penelope needed to know. From a man like Hotch, who usually would not let emotions stand in the way of his job, an embrace spoke louder than words ever could.

Only a few mere moments after Hotch had let go of Penelope, Morgan moved in again and wrapped her back in his arms. And to Penelope it seemed like he hadn't had any intentions of releasing her anytime soon again.

"You and I have to talk, Baby Girl," she all of a sudden heard Morgan's voice and for a moment she had a really queasy feeling in her stomach. But she just nodded and decided what would come next.


	24. the whole story

_AN: Thank you everyone who reads and reviews, it means a lot to me. We are almost at the end of this story. In regards of this chapter - if anyone thinks the story she tells of what she did to get a message out and what they saw before they found her is my idea entirely, sorry, nope. That actually is taken for an episode of NUM3RS where Amita is doing the same. And after 23 chapters and a few breadcrumbs we finally answer the question of what exactly happened the past few weeks and months the team had been searching for their tech.  
_

* * *

Penelope wasn't entirely sure what would come now, but when Morgan said he needed to talk to her she got a strange feeling in her stomach. One she couldn't really categorize. Then she realized that they needed her statement of what had happened exactly. But before anything really could happen an EMT pulled her away, telling her he needed to check her out to see if she was okay. Despite Penelope protesting and assuring the twenty-something, overenthusiastic paramedic that she was okay and needed nothing, he still sat her down and started his checks. She didn't know how long she sat with him, while he pulled and pushed, shoved and patched several parts of her face, hands and other body parts, before he seemed to be convinced she was okay. Apart from the psychological strain of course.

After the EMT had finished with his checks, she saw her team approaching and she knew what would come now.

"You need to know what exactly happened the past few months, right?" Penelope asked, seeing all of her friends and co-workers nod.

She took a deep breath, before starting her story.

"I… um… I got a call a couple of months back, from someone saying he was Victor and he wanted me to fly out here and … 'assist' him with a little project he had going on. I kind of didn't think much of it, told him that I wasn't working that side anymore and that I now actually worked for the FBI. He didn't say much after that and basically just kind of hung up. I forgot about the whole thing, and didn't hear from him again. A couple of weeks ago then, he called me back, saying he still needed my help and although I knew better I asked what exactly he needed me for. I figured maybe he was just in trouble or needed help with something that wasn't illegal…"

"Penelope you should have reported that you had contact with a known fugitive," Hotch reprimanded her, but didn't look too angry with her. In fact he looked more worried and concerned than anything else.

"I know. I just thought that maybe it was something he needed help with that wasn't illegal and also, I hadn't heard or spoken to him in years. It turned out of course it was illegal. He wanted me to hack into the Federal Reserve."

There was a moment silence, no one saying anything, but all of her friends looked pretty shocked. Whether it was because they might not think she could do it, or whether the whole concept of hacking in _there_ was the shock, Penelope wasn't entirely sure.

"He knew they'd publish the interest rates in the next couple of days. So he figured if he had a … um … 'head start' about how they would develop he could gain quite a financial advantage. I told him there was no way I'd do it. He kept insisting, so I hung up. A couple of days later he showed up at one of the meetings I go to for counseling family members of murder victims. He shoved a photo at me with my brother Payton in it, holding a newspaper dated the day before. It was like… one of these crime dramas when someone is kidnapped. And I was feeling like this was a joke, but it was clearly him and Victor said that if I didn't want anything to happen to my brother or his family, I'd better help him."

"That's what Joey saw that day…." Morgan mused and saw Penelope look up at him surprised.

"You met Joey?"

"Baby Girl, you have no idea to what lengths we went to find you," he smiled at her sweetly and Penelope was overcome with another big wave of guilt. She should have let them know.

"Victor said I should keep this between him and me, and not get anyone of my 'FBI friends' involved, or else. I tried talking to you guys the next day, but you all were so wrapped up with your own problems that I didn't want to bother any of you…"

"You can't possibly think that any of our issues would even start comparing to this. Penelope, compared to this, our issues were all nothing…" Rossi argued and Penelope once again felt guilty. Maybe she really should have pushed for attention and fought for her friend's time. But back then she had assumed that they were already burdened enough and didn't need the ballast of her issues on top of everything.

"Of course after my … um… 'meeting' with him I called Payton as well as his wife, but wasn't getting through to anyone. Having called my other brothers Palmer, Pemberly and Parker, they all said that they hadn't spoken to Payton for a few days either. I took it for… um … for real and booked myself on the next flight to Phoenix. Victor had left me a number where I could contact him and I let him know I was on my way... I was worried that Lefèvre might get a hold of my other brothers as well, and before I flew to Phoenix I made sure that they weren't traceable in any way. That there was no common link to get from me to them. One day when Victor moved us around, in order to keep away from leaving a trail, I was able to buy one of these throwaway phones with the card of my brother. The clerk looked strangely at me, but let it go. I guess… that's how you found me eventually…?" Penelope asked, and was surprised when Morgan shoke his head.

"No. If you think the clerk called it in, you are mistake. We found you through … your brother's credit card and security footage of the camera in the store…."

"How did you find my brother's credit card?" Penelope asked curiously.

"We will explain that to you later. But for the moment… what happened then?" Hotch probed and a moment later Penelope was going on with her story.

"I managed to call my brothers and let them know everything's okay and not to worry. And that Payton was okay as well. And to not contact anyone, especially not you guys… After a lot of work and stuff I managed to get done what Victor needed me for. He told me initially that he wouldn't harm Payton or me, when I was able to get him in, but I knew that this was almost certainly not the case. I mean I've been working with you guys long enough to know that stuff like that never ends well. So … I found some sort of way to make sure that whatever happened you guys would be able to nail Victor for what he was doing. I was …. um … surprised to see that he really let Payton go, when most of the work was done and he thought he got what he wanted. I decided to get a message out, with him, hoping that when he would find it he would somehow make sense of it, or get it to Pemberly. And that he would figure it out … And then you guys showed up…"

There was silence for a moment, before Penelope asked "Is Payton okay?"

"Yes, he's fine actually. Maybe initially a bit shaken up about everything, but good in general. Just like Pemberly, Parker and Palmer…" Rossi said and saw Penelope look up at him surprised.

"You've met my brothers?" she asked to all her colleagues, who all once again nodded.

"Even better, Baby Girl, they are in town. They had been looking for you, too, when we found them, walking more or less straight into us," Morgan grinned and could see the worry lines on Penelope's face. "Nothing to worry about. They're all just glad that you're okay."

Just as the rest of them.


	25. I'll spent the rest of my life with

_AN: Sorry for once again being late with uploading the next chapter for this story, but I had a bit of a busy day yesterday and then my internet connection was gone again. We are almost done, just a epilogue left after this chapter. Thanks for sticking with it til the end and making my first case file quite a nice success and somehow inspired me one way or the other to write another case file - but in a very different way. Not sure whether that will be posted next. I might also just take it easy and take a bit of a break from posting for the rest of the summer. _

* * *

After she told the team what had happened over the past few weeks and they all had gotten quite a good idea of what she did Penelope had hoped to finally get out of where they were. That's when Morgan, who by now was all over her again – something she quite certainly could get used to – steered her towards one of the SUVs. Mind reader, Penelope thought but then realized that it was only Morgan and her, and he didn't seem like he was waiting for any of the rest of the team.

"Um … won't you … wait for Emily or… Reid?" she asked a bit surprised.

"I told you we had to talk, Baby Girl," he smiled at her softly, before closing the passenger door and walking around the car to get in behind the wheel and driving off. "And trust me, for what I have to say to you, I most certainly don't need an audience."

The instant fear crept up almost immediately. God, he wouldn't chose now to start lecturing her on their friendship and everything that had went down between them before she went missing, did he?

"So... um… what do you want to talk to me about?" Penelope asked, trying to not sound anxious.

"Us mainly," was Morgan's short answer and Penelope felt even more worry coming up.

"Us?" Penelope asked, biting her lower lip. God, the possibilities of what would come next were endless. After all they didn't have the closest of bonds before she went away. There had been enough days during the past few weeks when she wondered how – if she ever made it back – her and Morgan would be. And there had been enough times when she actually had regretted to never have told him about her feelings. She remembered she swore to herself if she should ever see him again she'd come clean and tell him, but… well, somehow she wasn't so sure whether that was her best idea yet.

"Yes," he just said, before taking a turn and Penelope noticed than that he seemed to know where he was going to. As opposed to her, who had no idea where they even were right now.

"You and I are going to take a trip…." Morgan said rather shortly, making Penelope look at him curiously.

"A trip?" she just asked at which he nodded.

"Yes, but before we can go, I've promised your brothers to at least give them a few minutes with you to make sure you are okay," he laughed.

"They are… here?" she asked, seeing Morgan nod again.

"Yes, they kind of … um... stumbled into our search. Nice guys, I have to say. Very cool and they care a lot about you, Baby Girl."

"Yes, they always did. Probably cause I'm the baby sister, so they feel like they have to look out for me," Penelope explained, before going on. "You said we're taking a trip…. Care to at least let me know where to?"

"We'll go up north to Chicago. For you to meet my mum and sisters," he said, making Penelope look surprised at him.

"I … not wanting to sound,… um… bad or anything, but I met your mum already a few years back," Penelope said, finding it rather strange that after being gone for a few months and sort of kidnapped her best friend would find the first thing to do was to take her to his mum's.

"Yes," Morgan said, "But you haven't met them as the woman I'm going to spent the rest of my life with."

It took a moment for Penelope to take in what he just said, and before she could respond they stopped and Penelope saw four familiar faces smiling at her and looking relieved. Before Morgan could even get around, opening the car for her as he usually did, Parker had already yanked the door of the passenger side open and gave her a tight hug.

"Never ever do something like that again, Penelope. No matter what wacko claims to do god knows what to any of us, okay?" he asked, not letting go of her. By now Morgan had made it out of the car and Penelope could see him, but he seemed less than bothered stepping in.

After Parker, it was Palmer's turn to embrace her. He at least allowed her to exit the car before he pulled his sister in a tight hug. When Payton was done checking up on his sister and making sure she really was okay, the other two of her brothers repeated previous hugs and checks that she really was okay. Of course Payton mumbled several times how sorry he was that he sort of abandoned her with Victor, but in the end everyone knew that there would have been no way for him to stay behind.

While one of her brothers hovered over her, the others seemed to be engaged with Morgan, who seemed to get along pretty well with all of them. From previous experiences Penelope knew that every guy she had let meet with her brothers usually didn't like at least one of them. But looking at Morgan he seemed to get along just fine with all four. That thought brought her back to his earlier words in the car, but she found now wouldn't be the best time to ask further what exactly he had meant. Although, that should be rather obvious.

They spent the night at the hotel, which seemed to have been the home for the BAU team for the past few days at least. They had dinner and drinks with her brothers and only when the owner of the bar threw them more or less out they left for their rooms, with Penelope still having no answer to any of the questions she had.

Morgan had only informed her that they had an early morning flight to Chicago and that was that.

"Do I actually get a say in this?" Penelope asked the next morning, rather sleepy from the passenger seat of the SUV.

"A say in what?" Morgan asked.

"Well, whether I actually really want to go to Chicago?"

"Why wouldn't you?" Morgan asked back, with a smile that was disarming. "A week full of doing nothing and getting spoiled and pampered, catered to your every wish…."

"Ahhh, see, you left that last part out yesterday," she laughed now as well.

"I thought that would have been quite obvious. I mean when haven't I done that?" he asked, with a wink and Penelope realized they were back to the way they had been way before she got herself into all of this.

"Shouldn't we… um… talk about … well what you said yesterday. About that me meeting your mum as the woman…. um … "

"The woman I'm gonna spent the rest of my life with?" Morgan finished nonchalantly.

"Yes, that part. I mean… we, you… me… what I want to say is that me and you, before all this weren't really… close, at least not as close as we used to be. Shouldn't we at least work on reinstating that before moving on to… bigger things?" she asked, seeing Morgan look at her for a moment, before focusing back on the street.

"Woman, we've always been more than just friends, we just never bothered labeling it. Maybe it was laziness. Maybe we just didn't want to risk what the other could possibly think. But you have to admit we certainly always had been more."

"Well… we certainly haven't been lovers," Penelope commented.

"And we certainly won't become some…" Morgan answered sounding almost outraged, making Penelope look at him shocked for a moment.

"Well, if we won't than maybe I… um... got this all wrong," she tried back-paddling. She hadn't read anything wrong into this, had she? He had said he would introduce her as the woman he'd spend the rest of his life. That was pretty straight forward. Unless he was talking in a friendship-kind of way. That was the frustrating thing with him sometimes. He would say things and mean them entirely different, or he was just teasing.

"You are way too precious to be just a 'lover', Baby Girl. You're destined to be a wife, and if I'm lucky enough you'll become my wife…"

"Are you proposing?" Penelope almost shrieked. She couldn't help it. This wasn't something she would have expected before she left Quantico.

"Baby, trust me when I say that when I propose to you it will be the proper way after dinner and down on one knee and not in an SUV on the way to the airport while I drive. And anyway, I guess before we go down _that_ route we should maybe start with a little less, like… let's say dating…" he smiled at her softly, before pulling into the airport just a few moments later.

Morgan didn't notice until he held the door of the SUV open for Penelope that she looked a bit panicked, if not even freaked out. Maybe this had been a little too much in too little time.

"I know this must come as some sort of a … shock to you, but truth is, Baby Girl, I always loved you. Every time I said these words I meant them, but I guess it was never the right moment. And over the past couple of weeks I realized there were aspects, people in your life I didn't know about or knew about really little. And I want that to change. I want to know everything and everyone who is important to you and vice versa."

"You want to date me because you want to meet the people in my life?" Penelope asked, astonished, at which Morgan just laughed for a moment.

"No, gorgeous, I want to date you because I love you, but I also want to know everything about you, stuff only boyfriends know… I've wasted all these years arguing with myself whether or not to make that step, whether you had any reciprocating feeling for me as well and almost lost you twice now, without you ever knowing any of that. I don't want to lose you almost a third time and then find myself hating the fact that we never gave ourselves a chance to find out just how amazing we would be together."

Penelope was about to respond when Morgan just pulled her in, pressing his lips softly against hers. And just like that everything became better and Penelope knew it would all work out. One way or the other…


	26. epilogue

_AN: I would like to thank you all for the amazing support of the past few weeks for this story. Thank you for making me feel this good about my first ever case fic. Enjoy.  
_

* * *

_Five months later_

The week with the Morgan's had been truly amazing. At the beginning Penelope had been slightly worried how Derek's family would take the news she herself still had problems digesting.

Apparently, all of them were more concerned with how long it had taken Morgan to make that move rather than the actual change. According to Mama Morgan Penelope was already part of this family anyway. So nothing would really change-other than her maybe finally getting some grandchildren.

Also there was no real surprise in any of their co-workers faces. If anything they seemed to have more or less the same point as the Morgan's: How long it took him to finally make that move. Great, it seemed like everyone around them was waiting for them to finally make a move.

Three months after their visit at the Morgan's in Chicago, Morgan proposed for them to move in together. By now, Penelope was more or less spending all her time away from work at his place anyway. So for him it just made sense to get rid of her apartment and move her in with his.

"Don't you think that's kind of... sudden?" Penelope asked cautiously.

"Why sudden?"

"Well... we've only been dating for a couple of months now. Most people wait with moving in with each other a year or so…"

"Yeah, but we are not most people. And why a couple of months? What would you call the past six years?"

"Not dating," she answered sharply, but saw he was waiting for something that followed that. "More like…. foreplay," she laughed and saw him laugh as well, stepping closer to her before bending forwards and kissing her.

"That's my girl," he whispered, before kissing her again.

A while later, after Morgan was done molesting Penelope's lips, they lay curled together on his couch, with Penelope playing with the fabric of his t-shirt.

"So all it took for you to finally make a step was for me to run into the … um… arms of a wanted fugitive? Should have done that years ago if I'd known that gets you going," she smiled at him at which he returned a smile.

"You know so many fugitives, Baby Girl?" Morgan asked amused.

"Well… maybe one or two, although they are not really fugitives but more living off the grid. But that makes it harder for you to find me, which works out to my advantage."

"I see you've thought this all through," Morgan laughed at which Penelope punched him slightly.

"Yes, I have. Good for you that I don't have to go ahead with it, since I already have you under my spell…"

"Oh, baby, you always had. Not just ever since a few months ago. After all, who could resist the oracle of Quantico?"

"Don't you ever forget that," Penelope reminded him with a smile, before leaning up towards him and kissing him. And just like that both realized they finally got what they needed to make their life complete. Well, other than kids, but that wouldn't take too much longer either….

END


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